


London Calling

by SectoBoss



Series: The New Overwatch [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Assassination, British Slang, British food, F/F, Implied Relationships, London Underworld, Medical Procedures, Minor Injuries, Overwatch doesn't trust Widowmaker, Rescue Missions, Time Travel, Tracer enjoys annoying Widowmaker way too much, Tracer is the best pilot, Widowmaker is scarily competent, Widowmaker working for Overwatch, and Tracer as her backup, and cannot understand Tracer's slang, rooftop battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-07-22 15:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 66,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7443724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SectoBoss/pseuds/SectoBoss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recaptured by Overwatch, Widowmaker is sent on a mission to assassinate a high-ranking Talon agent in London. It should be an easy mission – get in, take the shot, and leave. But when Tracer’s your getaway pilot a lot of things can go wrong, and things like 'subtlety' and 'discretion' tend to be the first casualties. Now, lying low after the mission goes awry, the pair of them have to survive in the city until Overwatch can get them home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_From: Winston.H@ovrwtch.hq.net_

_To: Oxton.L@ovrwtch.hq.net  
_

_Subject: Widowmaker  
_

_Hi Lena_

_Look, about your mission tonight. I know we’ve already discussed this, but I just want to say again that assassination really doesn’t sit right with me, especially so soon after putting the gang back together, and ESPECIALLY since this is exactly why we got shut down in the first place. And using Amélie!? We only just got her back, we should be trying to break Talon’s conditioning, not use it for our own ends! I know I say this a lot, but sometimes it feels like it’s only me (and Angela) who’s saying it…_

_That said, 76 made his case and the intel he's dug up checks out, so I guess we have to act on it. If we take your target out we should be dealing Talon a major blow, and I pray the benefits outweigh the costs._

_Just try and keep a low profile tonight, okay? We really don’t need any attention on this one._

_Also, I spoke to Zenyatta and he said he’d talked to you about Amélie and Mondatta and what happened last time you were in London. I hope that means good things? You’re not going to try and get revenge, right?_

_Okay, I’ll quit rambling now. Good luck out there!_

_Winston  
_

_P.S. Hana says we should start calling 'Soldier 76' Morrison occasionally and see when he notices. You in?_

 

* * *

 

It was, Widowmaker thought, a little bit like history was repeating itself.

Here she was again, in the dead of night on a London rooftop, aiming down a sniper scope while a luckless bodyguard twitched his last a few metres behind her. Except this time the person in her sights was a human, not an omnic, and the man whose windpipe she’d crushed just moments before wore the black-and-white mask of a Talon commando.

She’d expected her old masters to come looking for her after Overwatch captured her, if only to tie up a loose end. She doubted they’d ever expected she’d find them first.

For a moment Widowmaker zoomed her scope out, checking no-one had spotted her on her perch twenty storeys above street level. Across the street was an enormous wedding cake of a building, all soaring stone pillars and marble domes. _The Royal London Opera Presents: Madame Butterfly_ was projected up its flanks in blue hard-light _._ Paparazzi scuttled around the doors like ants and a small crowd of citizens had gathered behind a cordon in the hope of glimpsing a celebrity or two.

And here he came, the man she was here to kill. Two police riders on hoverbikes cleared the way for his gleaming black limousine, which pulled up to the kerb with a hum of engines and a rustle of displaced air. A few paparazzi jumped out of the way before they were flattened.

An omnic bodyguard unfolded itself from a small compartment in the side of the limo and stalked round to open the passenger door. Widowmaker eyed the man who stepped out calmly, taking in the scene, lining everything up. For a moment the man was framed perfectly beneath the opera house’s adverts.

_It’s a boring opera anyway,_ Widowmaker thought. _I’m doing you a favour.  
_

She zoomed in again, crosshairs perfectly tracking the base of the man’s skull. He was walking down the red carpet now, arm-in-arm with a woman. His wife? His mistress? Irrelevant. That omnic bodyguard trailed a couple of steps behind. Could be a problem.

In four seconds the man would step through the doors of the opera house and she’d lose her shot. Plenty of time.

Windspeed, negligible. The slightest breeze coming from the south-west. Coriolis effect, accounted for. Bullet drop, likewise. The man was climbing the steps in front of the huge oak doors. Widowmaker’s finger tightened on the trigger and she felt an electric tingle of anticipation in her chest.

The bodyguard behind her target raised a finger to where its ear would have been, if it was human. Behind her the corpse of the Talon guard she’d killed emitted a burst of radio static.

“ _Rooftop, check in._ ”

_Trop lent, l'ami. Too slow._ Widowmaker held her breath, licked her lips, waited for the pause between heartbeats… _  
_

“ _Rooftop…? Rooftop, respond!_ ”

…and pulled the trigger.

The rifle barked. The bullet scorched its way through the air, crossed the street in an instant, and drilled neatly through her target’s head. What had a moment ago been an important British politician and secret Talon operative, and was now an already-cooling bag of meat, dropped to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

Widowmaker exhaled.

She permitted herself a half-second to confirm the kill – yes, he was definitely dead, that looked like his brains all over the shoes of the screaming woman next to him – and then ducked back out of sight, flattening herself against the rooftop she was perched on. And not a moment too soon. A moment later another gunshot echoed and a shower of pulverised brick dust rained down from a spot just above her head. That damn omnic bodyguard, she guessed. A human might have panicked when their boss’s head exploded three feet in front of them, but certain models of omnic didn’t have that problem.

Another shot whined past her as she shimmied backwards, scrambled to her feet and began sprinting away, vaulting over chimneypots and sliding under air vents. Behind her she could hear screams and the first wailing sirens, the sounds of a job well done.

_Now for the hard part,_ she thought to herself with a grimace.

“Kill confirmed, target down,” she hissed into a microphone that ill-tempered dwarf in Overwatch had built into the collar of her suit. “Need immediate extraction.” Footsteps across the rooftops towards her, other security guards she hadn’t spotted. _Merde._

“Sorry, love, think you’ve got a wrong number,” came a sing-song voice in her earpiece. “This is a private channel… who is this?” With just the faintest emphasis on the ‘who’.

Widowmaker ground her teeth as another shot rang out. Sparks sprayed from a metal fire escape behind her.

“This is Spiderwoman calling Fly Girl, and so help me God you are never picking our codenames ever again. _Now get me out of here._ ”

A barely-suppressed giggle on the other end of the line. “Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it, love? Hold on, I’ll have you out in a jiffy!”

Widowmaker wasn’t sure that was even a word but she was in no position to argue. She chanced a look behind her as she sprinted onwards. Three figures on her tail, all of them in Talon’s black uniform. Not good.

She ducked behind a chimney, pressing her back to the rough brickwork, listening to the footsteps coming closer, slowing down, the Talon mercenaries more wary now they’d lost sight of her. She flicked her goggles down, the lenses in them glowing blood-red, and the outlines of the three mercs glowed though the brick behind her.

Two split off to check behind a distant water tank, the third kept coming towards her. _Perfect._

In a split second she had rounded the chimney, dropped to one knee, raised her rifle and planted the merc’s forehead right in her sights. One shot and down he went. He didn’t even have time to raise his gun. The other two span round at the sound of the gunshot.

Widowmaker grappled away as the two surviving mercs filled the air where she’d just been with bullets. She heard one of them bellowing into his radio as she skimmed over the brick and slate rooftops and landed hard on the flat concrete top of a building that afforded dismayingly little cover.

“Time on that evac?” she said into her own radio, trying to keep her breathing under control, as she sprinted for the edge of the roof. Another glance behind her. The two Talon soldiers were too far behind to ever catch up with her now but by the gestures one of them was making he was co-ordinating other soldiers to her position.

“Umm… soon, soon!” Tracer replied. “Any moment now, like, really soon! Honest!”

“ _Please tell me you’re in the air_ ,” Widowmaker gasped, suddenly seized with the awful realisation that Overwatch could have just set her up to be retaken by Talon rather than deal with her themselves. And after what she’d just done, Talon would be anything but merciful…

“Of course I’m in the bloody air! I’m over London now! I’ve just run into a little snag, is all!”

“ _Explain_ ,” Widowmaker snarled, keeping the edge in her voice to keep the fear out of it. She took a running jump at the edge of the roof, soared over the street below, landed on the roof opposite in a neat roll and kept running. Behind her she heard a fire escape door slam open and booted feet echo.

“Well… this VTOL… it’s not stealthed like the fancy Talon birds you’re used to,” Tracer began.

“So?” Gunfire behind her. She jumped, span, fired, kept running. A Talon soldier twisted and fell, clutching his belly. The rest ignored him, kept on her heels.

“So, air traffic control spotted me! And I can’t tell them who we are, can I? So I just had to keep flying, and now they’ve sent someone up to investigate!”

“And this is a problem?” Widowmaker gasped, incredulous. More sirens behind her now, it sounded like London’s police were finally waking up and doing their job.

“Nah, not really,” Tracer shot back, that familiar confidence seeping into her voice. “I just have to lose this stupid guy before I can come pick you up…” She trailed off. “Wait, hang on…” Another pause. “Oh… oh you’ve gotta be- _shit!_ ”

A burst of static and the line went dead. Widowmaker’s heart nearly skipped a beat – for what that was worth.

“Tracer? _Tracer?_ ”

More dead air.

_Merde, merde, et encore_ _merde_ _.  
_

She glanced behind her and counted six armoured soldiers before she decided to stop counting and just keep running. An air conditioning vent came up on her left and almost without thinking about it she slapped a venom mine on it as she dashed past. A moment later she heard the _bang_ of it detonating and a pair of choked screams.

_Two down_ , she thought with a sneer. She tried her microphone again. “Tracer, do you copy?”

Another burst of static, making her heart sink, and then-

“-sus Christ! You still there, love?”

“Despite all efforts.” Another rattle of gunfire. A window ahead of her splintered crazily and then shattered.

“Great! Okay, do you want the good news or the bad news?” Tracer yelled.

Widowmaker didn’t dignify that with a response. Her grapple shot out again, yanking her up onto a rooftop several stories above the one she had been on. The Talon mercs would have to climb some stairs to follow her; she’d bought some precious seconds.

“Well, the good news is I ain’t dead yet!” Tracer cheered. _What depressing good news,_ Widowmaker thought, but said nothing. Around her the spires of central London towered around her and she thought she could see the Thames in the distance. She aimed for a distant parking garage and picked up the pace, cool evening air whipping her hair out behind her.

“And the bad news?” she asked.

“That bird that came up to check me out isn’t government, it’s Talon! They just tried to shoot me out of the sky!” Tracer sounded more indignant than scared, as if deeply offended that some Talon rent-a-pilot thought they stood a chance against her.

This was rapidly turning into an evening where the word _merde_ was getting overused, Widowmaker thought.

“Can’t you lose them?” she asked.

“What, in this old cow I’m flying? You gotta be joking! This is Overwatch’s old junk we’re using here, not the latest Talon tech!”

“Shoot them down?”

“This thing ain’t armed, love, it’s a cargo VTOL. Best I can do is pull alongside and flip ‘em the bird.”

“So what are we going to do?” It would take an observant person to notice the worry in Widowmaker’s voice, but it was there.

“I dunno, I’ll think of something! Where are you?”

Widowmaker looked around. “Ah… near a clock. A big clock, at the top of a tower. I can see the river beyond that…” She stopped. A white skull-like helmet popped into view over the rooftop and she sent it tumbling back down with a bullet in one of its eyes.

“Big Ben? You’re at _Big Ben_? How did you get all the way over there!?”

“I ran,” Widowmaker replied, and ran again as more Talon mercs began to swarm the rooftop.

“Christ, wish I had your legs!” Tracer said. Widowmaker tried not to read anything to that. “Okay, I’m coming in from the south – that should be on your right – I’ll try and- _aw, hell_!”

Widowmaker glanced up and to her right. Up in the sky were two dots of light, one bright blue and one a deep red. As she watched a streak of light leapt from the red towards the blue, missed, and exploded in a burst of smoke and flame.

“ _Bloody bastards_!” crackled her earpiece. “I’m okay! I’m okay!”

“Glad to hear.” Another venom mine left in her wake, another set of choking coughs and sounds of falling bodies. Widowmaker stopped in the cover the opaque smoke afforded her, flicked down her goggles, picked off a few stragglers who hadn’t made it to cover of their own. The mercs were close enough that she could hear their commander yelling at them.

“Command wants her _dead_!” he was yelling. “That means a nice, fat bonus for whoever brings me her head! Now _move up_!”

She blew the head off the first brave – or greedy – soldier to try their luck but by then the venom gas was dissipating and she turned to run again. But when she did so she saw exactly how much further the rooftop she was stood on extended, and it wasn’t nearly far enough.

“Evac would be appreciated,” she hissed into her microphone, and decided, what the hell, she might as well die fighting. She ducked behind some nameless chunk of machinery bolted to the building's roof and looked up again. The lights were closer now, discernible as the twin blue-hot thrust jets of Tracer’s craft and the red anti-grav engines of the Talon aircraft behind it.

She could hear the roar of the engines now, loud and getting louder, and before she could meaningfully react another streak of fire shot out from the Talon jet – _missile!_ – and bore down towards her. The VTOL span out of the way and the missile streaked harmlessly past. Widowmaker threw herself down as it sizzled overhead and exploded somewhere between her and the soldiers trying to flank her.

“Evac’s on its way! Where are… I see you! I can see you! Get to the edge of the roof, love, I’m coming in hot!”

That was an understatement if ever there was one. Widowmaker sprang to her feet and began sprinting for the edge of the roof.

“Actually, I’m coming in _too_ hot! Abort! Abort!” Tracer screamed.

“ _What_?”

The VTOL wasn’t even slowing down, she realised with dismay, but she was out of cover now and there was no going back. She kept running. Over the roar of the two aircraft’s engines she could hear boots and bellowed commands.

Tracer’s VTOL screamed through the air above her and the shockwave sent her stumbling sideways. A moment later Talon’s ship followed with the furious growl of straining anti-gravs. Turbulence buffeted Widowmaker, slamming her this way and that. She tripped, fell, scrabbled to her feet, kept running right to the edge of the rooftop.

Above her the two aircraft soared up into the sky, flying almost vertically, Tracer dodging another Talon missile.

Behind her footsteps clattered and she span around. The mercs had her cornered. They approached her slowly, cautiously, wary of another trap. _Guess I killed the reckless ones,_ Widowmaker thought with bitter satisfaction. Behind them, the one she assumed was their leader shouted in frustration.

“What are you idiots waiting for!? Shoot her!”

She kept her gun trained on them. “First one to raise their gun dies,” she snarled, loud enough for them to hear.

The mercs faltered, stopped advancing. One or two of them lowered their rifles. One even took a step _back_.

Widowmaker smiled in satisfaction, then realised they weren’t doing that on her account. She followed their eyes, and looked up.

The aircraft were coming back down. _Fast.  
_

“Time for take two!” Tracer yelled in her ear. “Hold on to your hat and get that grapple gun ready!”

_You cannot be-_ Widowmaker began to think, but then she quashed that thought because yes, Tracer really was serious. The VTOL plummeted towards the rooftop, engines howling, coming so close there was no way it wasn’t going to slam into them, so close Widowmaker thought she could almost see Tracer sat there in the cockpit…

And then the VTOL’s engines, housed in nacelles on the ends of its stubby wings, span round a half-circle and all of a sudden those twin lances of thrust were pointing _down_ , towards her and the Talon mercs. A wave of scorching air blasted over her. In her ear she heard Tracer’s “ _oomph!_ ” as the deceleration knocked the wind from her. The VTOL screamed to a half and for a few short seconds it was suspended in mid-air mere metres above Widowmaker’s head, its exhaust jets creating a burning curtain between her and the mercs. In the flank of the craft a rectangle of light popped open and in one fluid motion she raised her arm, aimed, exhaled… and fired. Her grapple shot up, through the open door of the VTOL, and she was yanked up towards it.

A rushing mass of moving air battered her as she shot upwards: the Talon craft, its pilot trying to pull up out of the dive they had stupidly followed Tracer into, tumbling past her. She heard the scream of its anti-grav engines as they tried to make a turn they couldn’t, and thought that she may _just_ have heard the screams of the mercs below as they realised where that aircraft was headed. It was in her vision for only a moment, an afterimage of red engines and black stealth cladding, and then it and the rooftop below her disappeared in a cloud of dust and twisted metal with a noise like the end of the world.

All that took maybe half a second as her grappling hook reeled her in, and then she was inside the cargo cabin of Tracer’s VTOL. The grapple dumped her unceremoniously on the floor and she reached over to slam the door shut behind her.

“And _that’s_ why you can’t beat a good old-fashioned twinjet!” Tracer cried with glee as the VTOL began to pull away from the wreckage below. “None of this anti-grav nonsense!” She paused. “Oh, no, now I sound like Reinhardt…” She chuckled, and then groaned like she was in pain. “You all safe and sound back there, love?”

Widowmaker staggered to her feet and pushed open the door between the cockpit and cargo cabin. “All present and correct,” she gasped with an exhausted sigh, flopping into the co-pilot’s seat and yanking her earpiece out.

“Smashing!” Tracer grinned. “Now let’s get out of here, before the rozzers show up.”

Widowmaker had thought herself fluent in English before she met Tracer. “ _Quoi_?” she asked, as the VTOL soared up towards the clouds fast enough to make it feel like she was leaving her stomach behind.

“The rozzers!" Tracer said. "The fuzz…? Coppers…? Bobbies…? No?”

Widowmaker looked at her blankly.

“ _The police_ ,” Tracer sighed at last.

If Widowmaker had been a more expressive woman she’d have buried her head in her hands.

They flew in silence for a few minutes, the bright lights of London slipping past below them.

“What is the matter?” Widowmaker asked at last.

“Huh?”

“Your arm,” she said, pointing. “You’re favouring it. And you keep grimacing. When you think I’m not looking.”

“Oh! Umm… it’s nothing,” Tracer mumbled.

Widowmaker just gave her a look.

“Okay, so, maybe it’s not nothing…” Tracer said sheepishly. “I, ah… might have cracked a rib. Or two? Not sure, really.”

“ _How?_ ”

Now it was Tracer’s turn to give Widowmaker the scathing look. “How? Love, I just made this bird go from full speed ahead to a dead stop! I’m lucky my eyes didn’t fall out!” She grinned. “Guess now you know why I wear the goggles,” she joked.

Widowmaker thought about that for a while. Then she opened her mouth to speak, but Tracer cut her off.

“Save it,” she said.

“What?”

“Save it.”

“But…”

“ _No._ I know what you’re about to say, love. Some garbage about how I shouldn’t pull stunts like that, right? How it’s not _logical_ to injure myself to save a teammate?” She glanced over at Widowmaker, her expression not hostile but not entirely kind either. “I dunno whether I should expect you to understand or not, if what Angela says Talon put you through is true. But… we do that a lot in Overwatch. Get hurt so others don’t. It’s kinda right there in the job description, so you’d better get used to it fast.”

Widowmaker thought of something to say, thought better of it, closed her mouth. They flew in silence for a few more minutes. Below them, the tangle of London’s centre gave way to the regimented grid patterns of its suburbs.

“I was actually going to say thank you,” she said at last.

Tracer blinked in surprise.

“Eh?”

“I said-”

“No, no, I heard you. Umm… you’re welcome.”

Another awkward silence. Tracer busied herself with an instrument panel, Widowmaker stared out of the window.

At last Tracer broke the silence. “ _Bollocks_ ,” she muttered under her breath.

“What’s wrong?”

“Air traffic control just revoked our clearance. I guess they were still tracking us even after that Talon bird went down.” She sighed in exasperation. “So much for our clean getaway back to Gibraltar!”

“So… what now?”

Tracer thought for a second. “First thing first, ditch the VTOL. Whole country’ll be looking for it by sunrise. Then… I don’t know. Head back to London, I guess? Overwatch has a few safehouses we might be able to use. We’ll probably have to lay low for a couple of days until old Winston can arrange something else to get us home.”

“Back to London. And you don’t think that’s risky?”

“Nah! They won’t think to look for us in the city we just wrecked. They’ll think we’ve gone to ground in Birmingham or Manchester or New Durham, somewhere up north.”

“Right.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh come, on! A few days lounging around in London, it’ll be fun!”

Trapped in a disused safehouse, eating British food, with the most energetic woman alive. Widowmaker could clearly add ‘fun’ to the list of English words she thought she understood before meeting Tracer.

_Welcome to Overwatch_ , she thought to herself, as the VTOL banked around and headed back towards London.

 

* * *

 

_From: Winston.H@ovrwtch.hq.net_

_To: Oxton.L@ovrwtch.hq.net  
_

_Subject: Re:Widowmaker_

_Attachment: BBC News – CHAOS IN LONDON! VICE CHANCELLOR ASSASSINATED, AERIAL BATTLE FOLLOWS  
_

_Goddamn it, Lena  
_

_Winston_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this for a change of pace from other things. The second chapter, if and when it appears, should be a bit of Tracer and Widowmaker trying to spend some time in each other’s company without driving each other up the wall. And Widowmaker trying to eat British food, God help her. I hope you liked it!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: this chapter's a bit less action packed than the first (although I hope to include another action chapter or two before we're done here). I hope you still like it!

Tracer landed them in the rusty tangle of an old industrial estate on the outskirts of the city centre, coming in low over the surrounding rooftops and dodging between jutting radio towers. The VTOL hovered over an empty patch of broken asphalt and weeds for a moment, the downdraft from its engines throwing litter and grit around in a cloud beneath it, and dropped neatly out of the sky.

Widowmaker hopped out as Tracer stayed behind to do some final checks on the aircraft and scanned the decaying buildings that surrounded them through her goggles. No heat signatures glowed in the empty windows, nothing moved in her rifle’s scope. They were alone.

“There’s places like this all over London,” Tracer said behind her as she clambered out of the VTOL and its door swung closed behind her. She winced as she jumped to the ground, her injured ribs hurting. “Shut down after they brought in omnics to replace most of the city’s workforce, way back before the Crisis.” She stood next to Widowmaker, her breath steaming in the cold air, massaging her ribcage.

“I don’t imagine that ended well,” Widowmaker muttered, slinging her rifle over her shoulder.

“No. No, it did _not_.” There was a strange edge to Tracer’s voice – not pain, or at least not _physical_ pain – that made Widowmaker give her a sidelong glance.

“ _Ça va_?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“Are you… okay?”

“Uh… yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just my ribs. Where’s good old Mercy when you need her, eh?”

Before Widowmaker could ask further, Tracer’s old smile was back on her face and she was dragging her across the tarmac towards a dilapidated warehouse. “Come on, then!”

Something awful occurred to Widowmaker. “ _Mon_ _Dieu… this_ is not the safehouse, is it?” she asked in horror, looking up at the cracked concrete and rusty metal.

Tracer chortled. “Nah!” She glanced over at Widowmaker and grinned. “Even by my standards, this’d be slumming it a bit too much. There’s an old Overwatch supply depot around here. With a bit of luck the rats won’t have nicked everything in it just yet…”

They reached the side of the warehouse and followed it around to a small door. Tracer bent to examine the handle.

“Damn. Locked. And I left my keys at home,” she said at last, straightening up. “Did you bring a hairp-”

That was about as far as she got before Widowmaker gave the door a savage kick. The lock burst out of the rotten wood and went clattering away inside the building. Tracer took an involuntary step back. The door creaked open on rusty hinges.

“Open sesame. _Après vou_ _s_.” _  
_

“’Preciate it, love.”

Tracer went in first, the light from her chronal accelerator illuminating everything around them in a faint blue glow. Widowmaker flicked her goggles back down, dialled up the night-vision.

They were in a small store room, one side packed high with crates that looked older than she was. A few old tools lay abandoned on the floor, buried beneath a thin layer of dust and grime. Widowmaker thought she heard the sound of rats scurrying away as they moved further into the room, their footsteps echoing off the bare brick walls.

“Overwatch used to have thousands of these,” Tracer said, sounding slightly wistful. “Little supply dumps for agents in the field. Some money, a change of clothes, a gun, that sort of thing. Most of them got picked clean by scavengers and gangs over the years, but one or two are still out there… aha!” She pointed to the far corner, where a pair of metal boxes poked out from under an old tarpaulin. “Bingo!”

Widowmaker hauled the crates out into the open, holding her breath against the huge clouds of dust they kicked up, and they opened one each. Widowmaker found three small handguns of a calibre barely large enough to kill one of the rats she kept catching glimpses of in the shadows, a few clips of ammunition, and a large duffle bag. She left the guns in the box and began packing her sniper rifle into the bag.

All of a sudden something soft flopped down onto her head and she squawked in surprise. Her hand went up and met fabric and what felt like stiff cardboard. She looked up in confusion to see Tracer grinning hugely, wearing a dark baseball cap and holding two shapeless overcoats under her arm.

Widowmaker put two and two together, scowled, and yanked the baseball cap off her head. “What is _this_?” she demanded.

“New outfit,” Tracer smiled, gesturing at the empty box she’d pulled them from. “And don’t knock it, love, I think it suits you.” She handed Widowmaker one of the coats. It was moth-eaten and smelled of old dust. “A certain… _je ne sais quoi_.” Her pronunciation was so bad it made Widowmaker cringe, although not as much as the thought of wearing these old rags did.

“ _Non_. I am _not_ wearing this,” she protested.

“Love, we kinda have to.”

“Really?” she snapped.

Tracer let the stupidity of that question sink in for a second. “Love, I’ve got a searchlight between my knockers-” she tapped the bright blue core of the accelerator meaningfully, “-and you’re _purple_. We’re many things, but inconspicuous ‘aint one of ‘em.”

She had a point there, Widowmaker grudgingly admitted.

“And if the boys in blue ever put two and two together, our faces are gonna be on the evening news and in wanted ads in every paper in the country,” Tracer added. She snatched the cap out of Widowmaker’s hand and slapped it back on her head. “So we gotta keep a low profile.”

Widowmaker glared at her. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she said at last, as Tracer shrugged on her own overcoat.

“Maybe just a little bit,” Tracer admitted, with a grin so wide it nearly reached her ears.

When they were done Tracer kicked the metal boxes back under the tarp and they stepped out into the chilly air outside. The sky to the east was beginning to stain red and orange. Widowmaker smelled rain in the air.

She examined her reflection in the remains of a window as Tracer gently propped the broken wooden door back in place as best she could. Her disgruntled expressing glared back at her from between the collar of her coat and the peak of her hat. She tightened her overcoat’s belt a notch, fitting it a bit more snugly. “Do we look _subtle_ enough?” she asked drily. Tracer came and stood next to her, peering dismally at her own reflection.

“Well, I look like a bag lady and you look a bit like the cute goth chick who turns up at parties and makes all the guys forget they brought their girlfriends,” she sighed. “Not sure _how_ you managed to look good in those.” She sounded a little envious. Widowmaker arched an eyebrow and gave Tracer what could charitably be described as ‘a look’. “But I guess we’ll have to do.”

They set off towards the edge of the industrial estate, picking their way over broken asphalt and around clumps of weeds. Eventually they came to a chain-link fence, and without hesitating Widowmaker grabbed Tracer in one arm and grappled seamlessly over the top of it, landing gently on the other side.

“Thanks, love,” Tracer spluttered, sounding a bit startled.

Widowmaker shrugged, glancing back through the chain-link at the VTOL they’d arrived in. “You can’t climb in your condition,” she said matter-of-factly. “What else was I to do?”

Tracer just smiled at her.

“What are we going to do about the plane?” Widowmaker asked, changing the subject.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get that sorted out…” Tracer began. “Wait. What’s wrong with your face?”

“What?”

“Your face, it’s gone this weird shade of… are you _blushing_? Why?”

Widowmaker scowled. “Perhaps because I am wearing this stupid, thick coat and I am overheating, no?”

Tracer smirked. “And not because I called you cute earlier.”

Widowmaker wasn’t used to feeling this much exasperation in such a short time. It was exhausting. _Tracer_ was exhausting.

“ _Non_.”

“Right, right. Of course.”

 

* * *

 

After about ten minutes walking they found a car that had been parked by the side of the road. Widowmaker kept a lookout while Tracer got to work.

“They never did fix the problems with the lock on this model…” Tracer muttered as she fiddled at the door with a screwdriver she had brought with her from the warehouse. There was a _clunk_ and the door popped open. “Alarm was shoddy too…” The car’s alarm made a few half-hearted whoops before Tracer yanked something important-looking out from the roof and it went dead. “Keys in the sun visor? Nah, that’d be too easy…” A _clack_ of breaking plastic as the steering column’s housing fell away. “Alright, put _you_ there, wire _you_ to _you_ , and…” The car’s engine thrummed into life and Tracer stepped back with a flourish. “ _Voila_!” She checked her watch. “And in under thirty seconds, too! Looks like I’ve still got it!” She puffed her chest up proudly, then winced as her injured ribs ground together. “Ow… Okay, let’s go.”

She reached over and unlocked the passenger door so Widowmaker could climb in. “Used to do this a lot as a kid,” she said in response to Widowmaker’s questioning stare. “Oh, come on! Don’t tell me you’ve never been for a joyride?”

“ _Oui_ , but I always killed the driver first.”

She might have to do that again, Widowmaker quickly realised. Tracer drove like she flew.

“First of all I need to see someone about the VTOL!” Tracer yelled over the roar of the car’s anti-gravs as they sped along, dodging neatly between the first of the morning’s commuters and leaving a trail of honking horns and bellowed curses in their wake. “Can’t have anyone finding it! After that, we’ll see about that safehouse!”

Widowmaker just nodded and hung on for dear life as they ran another red light and swerved around a lumbering truck. “What was that about keeping a low profile?” she snapped.

Tracer just laughed.

A few hair-raising minutes later they pulled up outside a scrapyard that looked like it had seen better days. Old cars, dead construction robots and even a few junked aircraft lay rotting in the mud beyond the front gate. A weather-beaten omnic wearing a flat cap and a jacket covered in patches sat in a small booth by the entrance, a steaming thermos by its side and a cheap tablet with the morning’s news on it in its hands. Tracer shut down the car and turned to Widowmaker.

“Won’t be a minute, love. You might as well stay here.”

Tracer sauntered off and Widowmaker leaned against the car to wait. She stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets and glanced idly around. The sun was definitely starting to struggle over the horizon now, promising the kind of bleak autumn day that England had so many of. On the other side of the sky, a few clouds were threatening rain. In the distance she could see the endless towers of central London, pillars of glass, steel and hard-light. Further out were enormous, hulking domicile complexes that looked as run-down as the city centre looked new. Closer to her the buildings were built to a lower plan: brick terraces and the occasional high-rise. She glanced over to the road. A few pedestrians shuffled by, mostly human, the occasional omnic keeping its head down. None of them gave her a second glance.

Tracer reached the booth and Widowmaker strained to hear what she was saying to the omnic inside.

“Y’alright, Mac?”

“Y’alri… _Lena_!? Bloody hell, love, is that you?” The omnic’s voice sounded like its voice modules might have come from the scrapyard behind it.

Tracer laughed. “Yup. Don’t get too worked up, though, I’m only about for a bit.”

“Where’ve ya _been_? We ‘aint seen ‘ide nor ‘air of you for donkey’s years! You on leave from the air force or somethin’?”

“Yeah, something like that. Y’know how it is, keepin’ busy in the meantime.” Tracer leant casually against the booth’s side, inspecting her fingernails. “So how’s life treating ya these days?”

‘Mac’ – somehow Widowmaker doubted that was the omnic’s real name – shrugged. “Peachy enough. ‘Aint minted but aint starving either. Why?”

Widowmaker scowled. They were speaking English. _Surely_ they were speaking English?

“Just wondered if you might be interested in a find.”

“Might be, might be. What you got in mind?”

“Well,” Tracer said airily, as if this wasn’t very important, “I was out for a drive with the missus this morning…” she glanced with a sly smile towards Widowmaker, who responded with a glare that could melt metal, “…when we came across this lovely bird just parked up on the kerb with the engine still ticking over! Boeing CV-230, I think, gorgeous little twinjet. Only a few hundred thousand miles on the clock, a few dings and scratches here and there but I’m sure they’d buff out, full bank of fuel cells… that sound like something you’d be interested in?”

Mac scratched its chin. “Blimey, Lena, where’d you come across one of them? Aye, I might definitely be interested.” It – he? – paused. “Also sounds a _lot_ like something the filth are lookin’ for.” It tapped its tablet, the headlines screaming about assassination and aerial escapes. “You on the lam _again_ , Lena?”

 _The filth?_ Widowmaker wondered in confusion.

“Why, you gonna snitch?” Tracer asked incredulously.

“Not at all, not at all. Just, it’s gonna be a hassle for me to take care of it.”

“Aw, c’mon Mac,” Tracer whined, then flashed him a delicate smile. “For old time’s sake?”

For a moment the omnic looked like it might refuse. Tracer began to look like a kicked puppy.

“ _Fine_ ,” it grumbled at last. “Give me the address and I’ll send some of the lads round to have a butchers. Now sling yer ‘ook, Lena, before you bring the rozzers in after you.”

Tracer didn’t move, just stuck out her hand. “Finder’s fee?”

The omnic didn’t have a face to speak of but it still managed to look incredulous. “Sod off! I’m doin’ enough for you as is!”

Again with the puppy dog eyes, Widowmaker noted. “Aw, c’mon, Mac, don’t be tight! I’m flat broke here!”

Mac groaned and reached into one of its pockets, pulled out a thick stack of banknotes, peeled off a few and handed them to Tracer. “’Ere’s a ton.” The hand stayed outstretched. “Fine, ‘ere’s a couple more. Now _bugger off_.”

“Mac, you’re a lifesaver,” Tracer grinned. “I’ll see you around, yeah?”

The omnic just pointed at the exit. Tracer gave it a little wave and strolled back to the car, where Widowmaker was still trying to work out what the pair of them had just said.

“Mac’ll have the VTOL gone by noon,” she said cheerfully. “One less thing to worry about!”

Widowmaker looked back to the omnic, who was muttering into a vid-phone it had pulled from its pocket. “You trust it?”

“ _He_ is a wanted felon, of course I trust him,” Tracer said. Widowmaker blinked in confusion. “If the coppers ever catch him, they’ll junk him,” Tracer explained. “It ‘aint exactly Numbani over here. In London, if omnics step out of line, the police just… melt ‘em down. For scrap.” She scowled, shook her head, looked up at the early morning sky. “Why d’you think we call them ‘the filth’?” she muttered.

Widowmaker looked up too. The sun was already disappearing behind grey clouds. Huge black thunderheads were sweeping in to take its place.

“Come on, love,” Tracer said. “Let’s get inside before it rains.”

 

* * *

 

The Overwatch safehouse was a flat located towards the top of an ancient high-rise. Tracer got the key from a wizened old woman at the reception desk and they rode a creaking lift up.

“Home sweet home!” Tracer cheered as she opened the door and marched inside. “Cor, it’s been _ages_ since I shacked up in this place!”

She pottered off, cooing at how much things hadn’t changed over the years. Widowmaker stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and looked around in dismay.

The first word that came to her mind was _tragic_. The main room had a threadbare sofa and an ancient TV set and that was it. There wasn’t even a carpet, just bare wood. Beyond that was a tiny walk-in kitchen, a bathroom so small she could probably touch all four walls at once if she tried, and a bedroom with a single mattress on the floor next to a wardrobe with no doors. A stained French window in the main room led out onto a balcony about half a metre wide. Everything was covered in a thin film of dust. They were probably the first to set foot in this place in years.

“What do you think?” Tracer asked as she came back from the bedroom, looking inordinately proud of the place. “Not a bad place to hole up, right?”

“I have… seen worse,” Widowmaker said, not sounding very convincing. “And how long do we have to stay here?”

Tracer shrugged, then winced as her ribs flared up again. “Dunno. Until Winston can figure out a way to get us back to Gibraltar. Might be one night, might be a week if things really don’t go his way.”

Widowmaker didn’t think she’d ever hoped for everything to go Winston’s way this much before.

“Well, I guess the first thing we need to do is get some food in here,” Tracer said, absent-mindedly massaging her chest again.

“ _Non_ , the first thing we need to do is fix your ribs.”

“Oh… yeah.” Tracer grinned sheepishly. “I guess we should. I was just gonna let Angela take care of them when we got back.”

“ _Bien sûr_ we should fix them now. I’m not babysitting an invalid for a week.”

“Ouch. That’s cold, love,” Tracer smirked, and walked over to check in the bathroom. “One good thing about these safehouses – they always kept the medical equipment well stocked. Angela always made sure of that.” She opened up a cabinet and poked around inside. “Now let’s see what we’ve got…”

She re-emerged with a pack of bandages and a small metal canister that looked like an enormous syringe.

“And we’re in luck!” she trilled.

“What is that?” Widowmaker asked, meaning the canister.

“The good stuff! Some of Angela’s med-tech. Just jab it in your neck and it’ll fix you right up. Won’t bring someone back from the dead, but it’ll paper over the worst of the cracks.”

Widowmaker took the bandages and the canister and inspected them. Fortunately someone had printed instructions for the canister’s use up its side. And despite being engineered as a killer, Talon had given her at least some rudimentary first aid knowledge as well.

“ _D’accord_ ,” she said. “Well, take your top off, then.”

Tracer blinked, grinned. “Well that was quick. Just like that?”

 _And here we go again,_ Widowmaker thought with a stab of annoyance. She’d been designed to react calmly to nearly any situation. Clearly the doctors at Talon hadn’t thought of Lena Oxton when they’d complied their list of situations. “I cannot apply bandages over your clothes.”

“So you’re playing nurse, then?”

 _Remain calm. Breathe deep. Do not act irrationally._ “I have to. In your present condition, you do not have the strength or dexterity to bandage yourself. So unless you want that old bat down at the reception desk to do it, I have to. Now, jacket and shirt. Off. That thing too,” she added, motioning to the chronal accelerator.

It was like flicking a switch. In an instant Tracer went from playful to defensive. Her muscles tensed and she backed away.

“What?” she said, eyes narrowing.

“Your accelerator. Take that off too.”

“Not on your life,” Tracer whispered coldly.

“Do not be such a child. Talon has extensive notes on that thing, I have seen them. I know you will not be inconvenienced by a brief disconnection from it. Now-”

“ _No_.”

“I said-”

“ _And I said NO!”_ Tracer snarled and for one moment Widowmaker thought she was about to attack her. She instinctively dropped into a fighting stance, legs apart, arms slightly raised, ready to defend and retaliate if a blow came.

They stayed like that for a tense second, neither sure how it was going to end. Eventually Tracer broke the silence.

“The accelerator,” she said quietly, “stays on. You hear me? Don’t care about anything else. I’ll walk round stark naked if you want me to. But this here,” she tapped it slowly, “stays on. _Always_. I don’t expect you to understand. I hope you never have to. But that’s _final_.”

Widowmaker grimaced. “I still think you’re being foolish…” she huffed.

“Couldn’t care less what you think,” Tracer said in that same quiet, dangerous voice.

“… _mais,_ if you insist, it can stay.”

Tracer visibly relaxed. “Thanks, love,” she said.

Widowmaker just shrugged wordlessly and began unwrapping the bandages from their packaging.

Tracer disrobed remarkably quickly for someone with a huge piece of metal strapped to their front. By the time Widowmaker was ready with the bandages she was sat topless – aside from the accelerator – on the threadbare sofa.

“Now paint me like one of your French girls,” she giggled, leaning back, and then bolted back upright with a yelp of pain. “Okay, bad idea,” she gasped, hugging her chest.

A part of Widowmaker wondered if this was what Dr Ziegler had to deal with every day. She felt a stab of something not a million miles from sympathy for the poor woman. Kneeling down, she began wrapping the bandages around Tracer’s chest. “If you stopped throwing yourself around, your wounds would not be so bad,” she pointed out.

“Just try and stop m- _argh_!” Tracer squeaked.

“What? What is it?” Widowmaker asked, her head snapping up.

“Your hands are _freezing_!”

“Oh. Yes.” She carried on bandaging.

“Beats me how you don’t get frostb- _argh_!”

A sigh. “ _What now_?”

“Ah… I’m ticklish there.”

“ _Génial_. Anything else before we continue?”

That grin again. “I’m ticklish some other places too-”

Widowmaker cut her off with a scowl. “Which I am _certain_ will not become a problem.”

Eventually she was done, the bandages wound tight around Tracer’s torso. Widowmaker pulled a tab at their loose end and there was a quiet electric hum. The bandages shifted slightly against Tracer’s pale skin, polymer micro-muscles woven into them fitting to her shape, keeping everything in place. _The wonders of modern technology_ , she thought.

She picked up the canister, re-read the instructions, screwed off one end of it and placed the cold metal against Tracer’s neck.

“Never thought you’d ever get this close to me and let me live,” Tracer said quietly, with a little smile.

Widowmaker paused. Thought about that for a second. Emotions she wasn’t supposed to feel flickered in her head, and then she pushed them neatly to one side. “ _C’est la vie_ ,” she replied. “Always full of surprises. Now hold still.”

She pressed a button on the canister and there was a little hiss as it injected its nanobot payload. Tracer’s skin glowed golden around it for a second, and then the glow spread out, fading away as it followed her veins. Within moments there was only the tiny puncture in her neck to show it had ever been there.

“Oh, wow,” Tracer mumbled. “That feels… feels good. Nice ‘n warm…”

Widowmaker glanced back the canister. There on the side of it: _nanobiotics will induce sleep in patient for several hours to facilitate faster recovery. If patient is still asleep after eighteen hours, contact Dr Ziegler.  
_

_Finally some peace and quiet_ , Widowmaker thought.

Tracer’s eyelids were drooping. “Man, I’m knackered… feel like I could sleep for a week…”

Widowmaker stood up, stretched, went to use the bathroom. She’d gotten to the door when Tracer mumbled again.

“Hey, love… just wanted to say thanks…”

“ _Pas de problème_.”

“Sorry I’ve been teasing you all day… you just look so flippin’ _funny_ when I do…”

Widowmaker raised an eyebrow indignantly, turned around to say something, but Tracer’s eyes were closed and she realised it would be useless to bother. By the time she came back out of the bathroom, Tracer was slumped across the sofa and snoring softly.

The bedroom’s single mattress was stained, lumpy and smelled odd, but after the excitement of the last twelve hours since Widowmaker pulled the trigger on that rooftop it looked very inviting. She’d definitely earned it, she decided.

Equally, you weren’t supposed to leave someone with injured ribs on as uneven a surface as the flat’s broken sofa. And badly-healed ribs were little better than cracked ones.

_Merde.  
_

Ten minutes later, lying awkwardly on the sofa while Tracer snored on the mattress, she closed her eyes and slept.

 _C’est la vie_ , indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so the thing about Widowmaker trying to survive British food had to get pushed back a bit, sorry!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know you're British when you try and make fish and chips sound disgusting, fail, and make yourself hungry. Ah, well. Hope you like this chapter!

The rainclouds had finally burst over London by the time Widowmaker woke again and sheets of rain pattered against the flat’s grimy windowpane. She groaned quietly, rolling her shoulders to try and get the stiffness out of them, and winced at the crick the uncomfortable sofa had put in her neck. The dingy shapes of the tiny flat slowly coalesced around her.

Something wasn’t right.

She sat up, looking blearily around her, trying to work out wat had woken her. A footstep outside the door? The creak of a turning door handle? The quiet _click_ of a safety catch being let off? Her heartbeat quickened slightly. She cursed herself for not putting a weapon within arm’s reach before going to sleep.

And then her backside vibrated.

She let a muffled bark of surprise and sat bolt upright. _What the…!_ Possible scenarios tumbled through her half-asleep mind and for a delirious moment she wondered if she was sat on a bomb Talon had snuck into the flat – or, worse if Talon’s surgeons had secretly implanted a bomb _inside_ her, a failsafe if she went rogue, and decided to put it in a rather delicate place.

The vibration came again, along with a quiet buzz, and she patted around under her with her hand, dreading what she might find. Her fingers met the rough material of the sofa, the smooth carbon-weave of her bodysuit, and came to rest against something hard and plastic.

_Oh, for…  
_

She dragged the plastic thing out from under her and glared at it. Tracer’s phone. It must have fallen out of her pocket last night. Widowmaker sighed and offered quiet thanks to no-one in particular that Tracer hadn’t been awake to see her little performance.

On the screen were the words _Incoming call from: Angela Ziegler_. Widowmaker wasn’t in the mood for conversation – she rarely was – but if there was a chance that Ziegler was calling about getting them out of there, she’d be a fool not to answer.

She accepted the call and raised the phone to her ear.

“Lena?” came Ziegler’s voice from the speaker.

 _She sounds just like she used to_ , Widowmaker thought.

“ _Non_. She’s asleep. I can wake her if it’s important.”

“Oh! Um…. hi there, Amélie.”

“My name is not Amélie.”

“Right, of course, of course. Sorry.” Ziegler sounded flustered.

Widowmaker remembered her. Talon had let her keep all of Amélie Lacroix’s memories. And why wouldn’t they? Lacroix had known Overwatch’s power structure inside-out by the end. No sense in letting that knowledge go to waste.

That didn’t mean she shared Lacroix’s history with Ziegler, though.

“Is there something I can help you with, doctor?” she asked.

“No, no…” Ziegler said awkwardly. In the few times Widowmaker had met Ziegler since being retaken by Overwatch, the doctor had always acted a little strange around her. Widowmaker couldn’t blame her much. Ziegler clearly missed Lacroix. She wondered if any of the doctor’s colleagues knew precisely why.

“So why are you calling?”

“I just… wanted to check up on you. And Tracer,” Ziegler added quickly. “How are you holding up?”

“Well enough. I am uninjured. Tracer has cracked ribs but I applied some of your nanobiotics we found in the safehouse. I followed the instructions on the canister to the letter, before you ask. As I said, she is resting now. Do you know when we can be extracted from this place?”

“Um… no, I don’t. Winston’s still working on it.”

“Very well. Is that all?”

“Yes…” Ziegler started to say, then: “Ah, no, wait! Amélie…”

“ _Widowmaker_.”

“…how… how much do you remember?” Ziegler blurted the words out, like she was trying to say them before she changed her mind.

“Of?”

“You know…. before. Before Talon, before they did _this_ to you.” A pause. “And of… us.”

 _Us._ So much history tied up in those two letters.

“I remember everything, Dr Ziegler,” Widowmaker said, her voice like ice.

Perhaps Winston or Reinhardt or that Japanese man who was more machine than man was listening in, she thought. Perhaps that was why Ziegler was dancing around the topic.

Amélie Lacroix had hailed from the upper strata of French nobility and contrary to what some of the more snide newspapers (and her own father) had suggested at the time, she had indeed married for love. And she had still loved Gérard on the day she died, right up until those amber eyes opened and a woman called Widowmaker looked out through them instead.

But as Gérard rose through Overwatch’s ranks in the years before his death, all the way up to Head of Counterterrorism, Amélie had to endure more and more lonely nights. More and more sleepless nights too, biting her nails and waiting for a phone call to tell her where he was, whether he’d be coming home that night, whether he’d be coming home at all.

And as they sometimes say, absence makes the heart go wander.

Enter Dr Angela Ziegler, who the newsnets were already calling the greatest doctor since Hippocrates. A child prodigy, a scientific genius, had gotten her first PhD at age sixteen – and, behind the façade of a devoted and genial healer, a miserable and lonely woman. Torn between her work and her conscience, crushed by her inability to save everyone, waging a personal war on death itself in revenge for some childhood loss. And, when all was said and done, just looking for a shoulder to cry on… and perhaps a little bit more?

Their first time was a mistake. They agreed as much and went their separate ways. Their second time, well, nobody’s perfect. And by the third time, and all the ones after that, all they cared about was keeping it a secret.

Widowmaker didn’t care about any of it. To her Amélie Lacroix was a woman whose memories she could access and whose body she had put to good use. She wasn’t about to get dragged into a dead woman’s mistakes.

“I certainly remember enough to know the real reason why you are calling, doctor,” she said.

“Oh, Amélie…”

The world’s smartest idiot pining after a dead woman. Widowmaker didn’t have the patience for this. She was about to cut the call, when Ziegler said something that made her blood run cold. Or, colder.

“We’ll bring you back, Amélie. I promise.”

Widowmaker hung up.

For a moment she sat there, in the evening gloom with the rain tapping insistently on the window. She wanted to open that window and hurl the phone out, dash it into a million bits on the pavement twenty-five stories below. But what good would that do?

So instead she stood up and went to see if someone had been kind enough to leave some coffee in the flat’s tiny kitchen.

 

* * *

 

It was early evening by the time Tracer woke from her medicine-induced sleep. She rolled off the mattress, picked herself up off the floor, and staggered towards the bathroom with her eyes still half-closed.

“ _Bonsoir_ ,” Widowmaker said when she re-emerged.

“Blaargh,” was about all Tracer managed in response. “What time is it?”

“About seven in the evening.”

“Really? I slept all day? Aw, hell, now my sleep schedule’s going to be out of whack for ages. Is that coffee I can smell?”

“Yes. Instant. It tastes like tar.”

“Let’s get some then,” Tracer mumbled, reaching over for the kettle and dumping the last of the hot water in it into a mug she pulled from a cupboard. She stirred some coffee grounds in and sipped it. “Ooh, that’s good,” she gasped. “Put hairs on your chest.”

Widowmaker watched her with an expression of vague horror. “You like it?”

“I’ve had worse, sure,” Tracer shrugged.

Widowmaker shook her head in despair. “How are your ribs?” she asked.

Tracer stretched experimentally, the bandages under her chronal accelerator flexing with her. “They… don’t hurt at all,” she said, surprised. “Wow. I mean, I should have expected that. Angela’s med-tech always does its job, but… wow.” She took another gulp of coffee and grinned.

Widowmaker suddenly realised she was about to be spending time locked in a room with Tracer on a dose of caffeine. The idea did not appeal.

“Perhaps you should go back to bed?” she suggested. “Rest some more. Make sure they heal.”

What she was beginning to think of Tracer’s trademark sly grin put in an appearance. “Only if you come with me, love.”

Her superhuman patience was at an end, Widowmaker decided. There was no way she could live for up to a week like this.

“ _Non_ ,” she snapped, taking a step towards Tracer and drawing herself up to her full height. She had a clear six inches on the other woman and put them to good use.

“I am sick of these _ridiculous_ innuendoes,” she hissed. She started to count on her fingers: “I can tolerate being a fugitive. I can tolerate the filthy looks half of Overwatch give me whenever they see me. I can even tolerate _you_ , most of the time, although _mon Dieu_ I know not how. But all those, and this too? I have had _enough_. And if you persist, Winston will be scraping you off the sidewalk beneath this apartment window instead of bringing you back home.”

In English-speaking countries, when you get angry, you raise your voice. In parts of France, you lower it. Widowmaker’s voice was a dangerous growl. _  
_

“ _Compris_?” she asked.

Tracer gulped. “Ah… yeah… no need to fly off the handle, love! I was, ah, just messin’ with you. Y’know?”

“ _Bien_.”

“It’s just… you looked really funny whenever I did it,” Tracer grinned sheepishly, scratching the back of her head.

Clearly the line between brave and foolhardy did not exist for Tracer.

“What?” Widowmaker asked, frostily.

“Yeah. You blush and your eye twitches a bit,” Tracer giggled. “Kinda cute.”

If looks could kill, Tracer would have been little more than a stain on the floor. “Well it stops. Now.”

“Alright, alright!” Tracer held her hands up in surrender.

There was silence in the flat for a moment. Widowmaker sat on the sofa and stared out at the rain as Tracer stood in the kitchen sipping her coffee.

Eventually the quiet was broken by a thick gurgling sound. Widowmaker looked around in confusion.

“Sorry,” Tracer said. “That was me.” Her stomach rumbled again. “I’m bloody starving. Aren’t you?”

Widowmaker shrugged. “My metabolic efficiency was increased. I do not need to eat much.”

“Oh.”

“That said, I am not exactly solar-powered. What did you have in mind?”

Tracer disappeared back into the bedroom and began pulling on her shirt and jacket. With the accelerator strapped to her chest it was not easy, but she’d had plenty of practice. “I was thinking we could go get something to eat. Find a little pub or a restaurant or something?”

Widowmaker frowned. “Did you ever mean it when you said keep a low profile?” she sighed. “I am, as you pointed out only a few hours ago, still purple.”

“I know I _said_ that,” Tracer grinned, “but… well, put it this way. We might be cooped up in here for ages,” she said, gesturing around the flat. “You sure you don’t want to get a change of scenery when you can?”

“And if someone spots us?”

Tracer looked out of the window at the rain and muttered something under her breath that sounded like “ _bloody typical_ ”.

“Don’t worry, love,” she said, turning back to Widowmaker. “I know some places in London where no-one’ll give us any trouble.”

 

* * *

 

They rode the lift down to ground level and stepped out into the night, pulling the collars of their coats up and the brims of their hats down against the rain. A few pedestrians hurried past them, hidden under umbrellas or with their faces bowed against the rain. No-one paid the two women in matching dark overcoats and caps any attention.

The streets gleamed with reflected light as they walked along pavements and ducked down half-forgotten alleyways. Adverts and shop signs shone in the puddles beneath their feet and shimmered crazily as they splashed through them. Tracer led Widowmaker between rows of terraced houses, their footsteps echoing off old bricks, followed the metal and weeds of an overgrown train track for a little while as high-rises and domicile complexes loomed over them, until finally they were stood outside a bustling train station that was busy disgorging the last of the day’s commuters out into the rain.

“Probably a bit risky to waltz in the front door,” Tracer said. “Let’s use the back.”

“We’re going for a meal in a train station?”

“Nah, love. This is just the way in.”

“To _where_?”

“You’ll see.”

They skirted the side of the station and went in through a side door that didn’t look like it saw much use. Tracer led her down a maze of corridors lit by dingy fluorescent lights that gave everything a sickly yellow tinge. She stopped outside a set of lift doors, jabbed the call button, and ushered Widowmaker inside once the doors finally rattled open.

“Most folk use the entrances at King’s Cross or Waterloo,” Tracer said as the lift plummeted down. “But I figured we’d be better off using a way in most people don’t know about.”

The lift was deceptively fast considering its aged appearance, Widowmaker thought. She thought she could hear air whistling past outside it. How for down were they going?

“Most of London is covered in CCTV,” Tracer continued. “Been that way since long before I was born. But there’s one place where you’re guaranteed not to be noticed.” She spoke like a tour guide. “And by the way, this is an old cargo lift, so get ready for a sudden stop at the end.”

She’d barely said it before the lift slammed to a halt with a _crunch_ of gears and Widowmaker was nearly sent flying. The doors opened with a quiet _ding_. Widowmaker stared out at what was beyond them.

 _Of course_ , she thought. Where else could they be?

“Welcome to the Underworld, love,” Tracer said, stepping out of the lift.

It looked like Hell. A deep pit extended as far down as Widowmaker could see, bathed in a fiery red glow from construction machinery and smelting plants that dotted its walls like blisters. Endless pre-fabricated housing units grew up the sides and stretched out across the middle like strange cuboid fungus. She followed Tracer out of the lift and onto a little platform that jutted out from the wall. Cautiously, she leaned over the railings at the platform’s edge and looked down. She was not normally afraid of heights but there was something about this pit that made her palms start to sweat. It seemed to go down to the Earth’s core. The thick stink of hot metal wafted up on a blast of air from below and she took a step back. Above her London’s underbelly hung like an iron cloud. As she watched an Underground train popped out of a tunnel mouth high above her, ran along a monorail across the metal sky, and disappeared behind a bank of steam.

“ _Mon dieu_ ,” she muttered.

“Bet you’ve never been in a place like this, eh?” Tracer asked, raising her voice to be heard over the clatter of machinery, the hum of electric wires, and a strange, distorted cacophony that Widowmaker suddenly realised was voices: hundreds of thousands of omnic voices.

She’d been sent on missions in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, the worst corners of Hyderabad and the districts of Moscow that the Russian government insisted didn’t even exist. But she had to admit, she really had never been in a place like this before.

“Wait,” she said as Tracer grabbed her by the arm and led her into the tangle of streets, ducking under power cables and dodging street vendors. “Where will we find food in a city full of omnics?”

Tracer rolled her eyes. “It ‘aint just omnics down here, love! Anyone on the skids ends up down here eventually.” She grinned sourly. “Welcome to London, melting pot of Europe – and like a pot, the scum floats to the top and the bottom gets burned.”

“Very… succinct.”

“Like it? I got it from a book.”

They passed omnics by the dozen as they went along, humans too, all hurrying this way and that. Widowmaker heard shop owners shout the price of their wares in five different languages. The clatter and clang of machinery filled the air.

“Not much further now!” Tracer called over her shoulder as she weaved around a hulking combat omnic of a type that Widowmaker thought had all been shut down. The omnic made a series of bleeps and whistles that she assumed meant something like ‘ _watch where you’re going!_ ’ and shook a fist. Widowmaker thought for a moment it was going to try and crush Tracer but instead it just ambled off, servos whirring and shaking its head in contempt.

A few streets later Tracer stopped in front of a nondescript building that looked largely identical to the ones either side of it. “This is what we’re looking for,” she said. Widowmaker, watching with detached interest as a human woman and an omnic a few paces away debated the price of an artificial arm the woman was trying to sell, took her word for it.

The inside of the building was dim and Widowmaker instinctively reached up for her goggles, hidden underneath her cap. In a moment she could see clearly again. By the looks of it they were in a small restaurant. A few tables were scattered around a large room and a bar took up the far wall. A smattering of customers, human and omnic, sat at the tables or propped up the bar. In one corner an omnic in a slightly ragged tuxedo was making some strange warbling noises into a microphone and after a moment Widowmaker realised this must be the omnic equivalent of a jazz singer.

Another omnic in a stained apron stuck its head out of a door behind the bar, saw the two of them standing there and walked over. “What can I get you two…” it started to say, then trailed off at the sight of Widowmaker’s seven blood-red goggle lenses glaring at it.

“Table for two, please” Tracer said, jabbing an elbow into Widowmaker’s ribcage. She reached up and flicked her goggles off.

“Sure thing,” the omnic said a little uncertainly, and led them to a table in the far corner. “Take your coats?” it asked as they sat down.

“Nah, we’re good,” Tracer said.

“Order at the bar, then,” the omnic said, and hurried back into the kitchen.

“Good start. Frighten the staff,” Tracer deadpanned once it had left.

Widowmaker shrugged helplessly.

“They’ve probably had worse wander in here,” Tracer said, looking around. “Right, I’m famished. You want anything?”

Widowmaker looked around their table. “Where is the menu?”

Tracer giggled. “The menu? Love, Paris is a couple hundred miles that way,” she grinned, pointing over her shoulder. “This is an omnic joint. You go up to the bar and you ask for human food.”

“Forgive me for expecting a shred of convenience,” Widowmaker shot back. “ _De plus_ , unless my sense of direction has deserted me, Paris is actually _that_ way.” She pointed in almost completely the opposite direction to Tracer.

“Ooh-la-la,” Tracer said. “Don’t worry love, I’ll order you something edible.” She stood and made for the bar.

“By whose standards?” Widowmaker called after her, remembering Tracer’s reaction to the coffee they’d found in the flat earlier.

Tracer was at the bar for a short while, chatting to a few of the other customers and the omnic behind it. While she waited, Widowmaker idly surveyed the room, wondering how she’d assassinate each patron in the most efficient manner. It was a habit Talon had encouraged in her – have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

_Venom mine on that table, kill the three humans at it. Take the knife from the big one’s boot, use it on the one at the next table. Omnic behind him tries to intervene, go for the power core. Shoot the bartender next, it might have a weapon concealed. After that, move to the door, cut off escape-_

“Grub’s up!”

She blinked and looked up. Here came Tracer with two steaming plates balanced on one arm and a pair of pint glasses in the other. Widowmaker suddenly realised she was actually quite hungry.

“What is it?” she asked hopefully.

“Fish ‘n’ chips!” Tracer said happily, sitting down opposite her. She pushed one of the plates and glasses over to Widowmaker, whose hunger evaporated instantly.

“What… what _is_ this?” she asked in dismay.

“ _Fish ‘n’ chips_ ,” Tracer said slightly louder, her mouth already full.

Widowmaker looked down at her plate. Something jagged and orange lurked in a mass of pale yellow chunks and glistened with an oily sheen. It looked like the nest of some disgusting alien creature.

She turned to the pint glass Tracer had given her. The liquid inside, what little of it there was under a thick head of foam, was the colour of stale urine.

 _Je suis en enfer_ , she thought miserably to herself, and pushed the plate away from her. Tracer looked up from shoving her own food into her mouth.

“You not gonna eat that?” she asked around a mouthful of chips.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Sure you’re sure?”

“ _Yes._ ”

Tracer paused. “Go on. Try a chip.”

“ _Non, merci_.”

“You might like it.” She picked one off her own plate and held it out. “Just one?”

Widowmaker glared at her. “If I do, will you shut up?”

“…maybe.”

She sighed and picked a chip delicately from her plate, marvelled distantly at how much her life had changed in such a short time – from Talon operative to Overwatch fugitive, from rooftop assassinations to greasy food in London’s bowels – and popped it in her mouth. It tasted of grease and salt.

Tracer watched her expectantly. After a moment Widowmaker picked up another chip.

“So perhaps they are not as bad as they look,” she admitted quietly.

Tracer grinned. “Don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it, that’s what my ma always said.” She took a sip of her beer.

They ate in silence for a second, the only sounds the hum of conversations around them, the chirrups of the omnic singer in the corner, and the distant _thud-thud-thud_ of the Underworld’s machines.

As usual, Tracer was the one to break their silence. “So…” she said after a while, “got any plans for when we get back?”

Widowmaker tried a sip of her beer. It tasted how it looked. She winced and put it to one side. “Back where?”

“Gibraltar. Like… I dunno. You gonna stay with Overwatch? Go freelance? Retire to the country and start a farm?” She chuckled at the last one.

 _Well Dr Ziegler seems to want to brainwash me back into being her girlfriend,_ Widowmaker thought, but said nothing. “I wasn’t aware Overwatch was going to give me a choice,” she replied evenly.

Tracer shrugged. “Hmm. Maybe not. That’s up to Winston and 76 more than me, though.”

“And if it was up to you?”

“Love, if I’d had my way, they’d have let me blow your head off the moment we captured you.”

Widowmaker raised an eyebrow at that. Tracer held her gaze.

“After what you did up top, on King’s Row… Mondatta, and Ana, and all the rest over the years…” Tracer huffed and looked away. “Yeah, I wanted you dead. Wanted to do it personally. Zenyatta talked me out of it eventually. That and Winston wouldn’t give me the key to your cell.” She took a long drink of her beer.

“Then I must remember to thank them both,” Widowmaker said drily. “Am I supposed to apologise?”

“It’d be a start.”

“Then I’m sorry.”

“You don’t mean that, though. Do you?”

Widowmaker thought for a moment. “No. I was made to kill. I will not apologise for doing the job I was made for.”

Tracer looked glum. “Is that really how you see it?”

“More or less.”

“Oh.” There didn’t seem to be much more for her to say. “So you just kill who you’re told to? Talon told you to kill Mondatta, so you did, and now we’ve told you to kill Talon agents, so you did?”

“ _Oui_.”

“So… what if Winston told you to kill me?”

Widowmaker didn’t respond.

“If he rang you up, right now, and said ‘hullo, Widowmaker, it’s good old Winston here, would you mind awfully choking Lena to death, turns out she’s been a Talon agent all along’, would you do it?”

“If you were a Talon agent? _Oui_.”

“And if I wasn’t? If he told you to kill me ‘cos I ate the last of his peanut butter?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“So you wouldn’t kill me, then?”

“Not without good reason.”

“That true for everyone? What was Mondatta’s ‘good reason’?” Tracer spat.

“I did not care about Mondatta,” Widowmaker said, then immediately realised she might have phrased that better.

Tracer’s eyes went a little wide. “Hold on, hold on… but you do care… about _me_?”

The trademark grin flickered again. Widowmaker’s heart sank.

“Insofar as you are my ticket out of a city where I am wanted for murder, _oui_ , _cherie_ , I care deeply about you,” she said, heaping on the sarcasm.

“Aww, love, I’d never have thought you actually cared,” Tracer said with a sickly sweet smile.

“Don’t start this again,” Widowmaker groaned.

“Start what?” Tracer asked with faux-innocence.

Widowmaker shook her head in exasperation. “ _That_. I thought you agreed to stop!”

“Yeah, but that was before you admitted you cared about me,” Tracer smirked.

Widowmaker would have given anything to wipe that grin off of the other woman’s face. She was about to reply, when suddenly Tracer stopped grinning. A look of horror took its place.

“What…” she began, then realised Tracer was no longer looking at her, but behind her, over her shoulder, and her head snapped around to look.

Her reactions were good, almost superhuman. She saw the masked thugs beginning to pour through the door, knocking an omnic to the ground, bursting its fragile chassis beneath heavy boots. She saw the thing that looked like swirling black smoke materialise behind her. Saw the burly figure that stepped out of the smoke, recognised that death’s-head mask in an instant, had the time to read the letters imprinted on the shotgun muzzle shoved in her face.

Had the time to hear the words: “ _Very disappointed in you, agent_.” And from across the table, behind her: “ _NO_!”

She even had just enough time to register the muzzle flash, before everything went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reaper there providing an excellent demonstration of [Chandler's Law](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChandlersLaw)...


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another mostly action chapter this time, with a bit of time travel because apparently it wasn't confusing enough. Hope you like it!

Widowmaker toppled off her seat and slumped onto the floor, her head a shapeless mess of blood and bone. A single intact goggle lens glared reproachfully up at Tracer from the wreckage as she looked on in dumb horror.

Reaper turned his shotguns on her as the first of the bar’s customers began to scream.

Tracer did the only thing she could, and rewound.

 

* * *

 

_Back into the black, the cold, the emptiness outside of time, the place that feels that little bit more like home every time she visits.  
_

_Blood flows backwards, her heartbeats reverse, her thoughts come in a tangle as reality loses meaning.  
_

_“Slipstream to Titan One, it’s a lovely day for flying!”_

_Past, present and future – what’s the difference?  
_

_“Mum? Dad? You there? Hello?”  
_

_Less than you’d think.  
_

_“Why!? Why would you do this?”  
_

_There’s a reason she always moves around the battlefield, blinking about like a hyperactive child. It’s so that when she inevitably has to rewind, she’s not in the same place. Because when two versions of the same person try to occupy the same space, time doesn’t like it. She’s learned that from experience.  
_

_But she was sat down when she rewound this time, in the same chair she’d been in all night.  
_

_She grits her teeth, utters a little prayer to a God she’s never really believed in.  
_

_This isn’t going to end well._

 

* * *

 

“-out of a city where I am wanted for murder, _oui_ , _cherie_ , I care deeply about you,” Widowmaker said, heaping on the sarcasm. She expected Tracer to fire back one of her tedious innuendoes even as she said it, realising all she was doing was digging the pit she was in deeper.

But instead Tracer shuddered, her chronal accelerator made a strange buzzing noise like an old computer, and she sucked in a gasp of air. For a moment she looked strangely _translucent_ , as if she was made of stained glass and Widowmaker could see right through her.

“Tracer?” Widowmaker asked warily, unsure what was happening.

Tracer looked around wildly, at Widowmaker, at the bar door behind her, then reached across and grabbed Widowmaker’s wrist in a vice grip.

“Love, listen to me,” she hissed, her eyes wide. “Any moment now Talon’s going to come through that door.”

“ _What_?”

“Reaper’s with ‘em. He’ll come up behind you, try and get the drop on you. _Don’t let him_. Did you bring a gun?”

“Wha… _merde_! _Non_ , I did not! You said we’d be safe!”

“Well I must’ve messed up. Sorry, love. Take mine, I won’t be able to use ‘em.” Tracer reached into her overcoat, pulled out her twin pulse pistols, shoved them across the table.

“Why not?” Widowmaker hissed, picking them up and examining them.

“’Cos I rewound into myself,” Tracer said, her expression desperate. “They came in, they killed you, it was all I could do!”

Widowmaker’s mouth flopped open. “They _kill_ -”

“Shut up and _listen_! I rewound into my own body, I’m not meant to do that. My timeline’s about to get _seriously_ out of whack. There’s gonna be me, past me, future me, I don’t know who, all sharing my body. I’m not gonna be good for anything so you’ve got to get us both out of here!”

“But I don’t-” Widowmaker spluttered, trying desperately to get a grip on what was happening.

“ _Here they come_!” Tracer yelled, diving out of her seat and under the table. On instinct Widowmaker followed her, landing on the dirty floor next to her. Tracer toppled the table over to the face the door and they ducked behind it.

From across the bar came the sound of a door slamming open and booted feet pounded on metal floor. Voices shouted and someone screamed.

Widowmaker glanced around the side of the table. Talon mercs, just like Tracer had said, were pouring in through the bar’s front door. One of them smashed a fleeing omnic aside and it went down in a spray of broken plastic.

“Spread out and find her!” she heard one of the mercs bark over the sounds of the other customers leaping to their feet, turning to run, screaming in panic.

She raised one of Tracer’s guns, took a moment to familiarise herself with its strange design, and squeezed off a couple of shots. The lead merc collapsed and lay still.

“ _There she is_!” one of his comrades yelled, pointing at her.

She fired again, spraying blindly, making the remaining mercs duck and scatter. Then the pistol bleeped and clicked. _Empty_ , she realised. “Tracer!” she hissed, leaning down so she could be heard over the noise of the Talon mercs returning fire. “How do I reload these?”

“Just hit the side! It’ll rewind the clip!”

Widowmaker smacked the side of the pistol. The cylinder inside it span, whirred, glowed blue and suddenly the gun felt heavier in her hand.

“Oh… oh no…” Tracer whimpered beside her as she fired again. Her accelerator was making a series of strange whoops and warbles. “I think it’s starting…”

“What, what is?” Widowmaker demanded. A spray of gunfire chewed holes in the metal floor next to her and she was showered with sparks.

“Just, please, don’t leave me behind!” Tracer begged.

And then the chronal accelerator made a loud _clunk-WHAM_ sound like a bad gear change and it’s blue core flared magnesium-white. For a moment Tracer’s expression went utterly vacant, and then she looked at Widowmaker with confused eyes.

“Wha… who… who are you!?” she spluttered.

Widowmaker just stared at Tracer for a second, not understanding, and then a black-clad merc rounded the table and raised his gun at her. Her leg lashed out, delivering a kick straight into the man’s groin, and he collapsed with a yelp. Widowmaker snatched his gun up, smashed him in the face with the stock, and fired on one of his friends who was trying to follow him. The second man slumped against the wall, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

“Where am I? What’s going on?” Tracer screeched, looking around wildly. She started backing away from Widowmaker, out into the open beyond what little cover their overturned table offered, and Widowmaker had to grab her and haul her back.

“Where’s the Slipstream? Where am I?” Tracer moaned. “What _happened_?”

 _She said past her, future her_ , Widowmaker thought. _Tracer when she was lost in the Slipstream accident? Is this her?_

She flicked her goggles down and popped her head up, surveying the room through the thick clouds of dust that the gunfire had kicked up. Seven heat signatures glowed on one side of the room, the thick outline of Talon’s body armour. They were exchanging fire with the omnic behind the bar and a few of the other customers who had taken cover behind overturned tables too. The bartender was wielding some vicious-looking shotgun, the rest held pistols of various sizes. There was a flash of gunfire, an omnic to Widowmaker’s left exploded in cloud of shrapnel, but the bartender was a quick shot and blew the brains out of the merc who had killed its fellow.

Beside her, Tracer was screaming into her collar as if she expected a microphone to be somewhere in there.

“Titan One, Titan One, come in Titan One! This is Slipstream! Something’s gone horribly wrong! I’m in… oh, God, I don’t even know what’s happening! The plane’s gone, I’m in some kind of warzone! Titan One! Can _anybody_ hear me? For the love of God, please, someone, respond!”

They couldn’t stay here, Widowmaker realised. One grenade and it’d all be over. She just prayed there was a way out through the back.

She ducked back down next to Tracer.

“Oxton!” she shouted over the gunfire and the cry of another omnic dying. Tracer looked up at her with equal parts hope and desperation.

“How- wait!” something like recognition flashed on her face. “ _Lacroix_?”

Widowmaker shook her head. “Not Lacroix. But we have to get out of here!”

There was a clear path to behind the bar. It was a start. Widowmaker grabbed Tracer’s hand, let loose a spray of pulse rounds from her pistol and sprinted forwards. Tracer followed, stumbling over chunks of debris and the crumpled remains of omnics.

They dived for cover behind the bar just as another burst of gunfire punched holes in the walls above them. The bottles on the wall shattered and Widowmaker was showered with shards of glass and sprays of alcohol and ice-cold coolant. _Now I know what omnics drink_ , she thought madly to herself.

“How do you know my name? Who _are_ you?” Tracer shouted over the noise.

“Shut up and keep your head down!” Widowmaker snarled.

Beside them the bartender was firing madly from its pump-action shotgun, spraying the room with buckshot. Widowmaker guessed it might have been an ex-military model from before the Crisis, from the speed at which it was fighting.

“What’s the hell’s going on!? Who are these people?” the omnic demanded as she crouched next to it and hammered Tracer’s pistols in an effort to get them to reload.

“Talon!” she yelled back as the guns whirred back into life.

“ _What_?” the omnic roared. “Aren’t they… aren’t they the ones who killed Mondatta?”

Widowmaker blinked in surprise. Talon’s Misinformation Division was supposed to have pinned that kill on anti-omnic radicals. _Great job as always, crétins_ , she thought wearily. “That’s what I heard,” she said.

“ _Bastards_!” the omnic howled, the lights on its chassis flicking from pale blue to deep red. It emptied the shotgun wildly. “ _Bastards_!” The gun clicked empty and it didn’t even hesitate, just tossed it to one side and leapt over the bar, razor-sharp blades springing from its forearms. _Definitely military_ , Widowmaker decided. It sprinted straight at the nearest Talon merc, swatted aside the table the man was using as cover, and buried one of its blades right through his eye. The man gurgled and fell.

Widowmaker watched it go, slicing through the remaining mercs like they were nothing. The last two let loose hail of gunfire at it, one of them actually screaming in terror as it advanced on him.

Then something like thick smoke billowed around the whirling omnic. The machine span around, trying to work out what was going on, as a man stepped out of the cloud with guns raised. The omnic lunged for him and he sidestepped, deceptively quick for someone his size. As it toppled past him, arms flailing, trying to either regain its balance or plunge a blade into his chest, he shoved a shotgun muzzle under its chin and blew its head off.

The omnic toppled to the ground, sparked, and went still.

“ _Find her,_ ” Reaper hissed at the two remaining commandos. They nodded nervously and began to comb the room. Most of the customers were either dead or had fled, the one or two who had not raised their arms in surrender. Reaper gunned them down without a second glance.

Widowmaker ducked back down behind the bar. Just a metre or two away was the door to the kitchen, and potential safety – or, a quick death.

She turned to Tracer. “If you want to live, come with me,” she said, keeping her voice low.

But Tracer’s expression had gone vacant, and the accelerator made that _clunk-WHAM_ noise and flared again. On the other side of the bar she heard the rustle of clothing as Reaper whirled around at the sound.

“Wha… who’re you?” Tracer gasped. “Wha’s goin’ on?” She raised her voice. “Mummy? Dad? Where are you? Help!”

A shadow fell over them. Widowmaker looked up into Reaper’s scowling mask looming over her.

“ _There you are._ ”

Tracer looked up too and screamed in terror.

Widowmaker moved as fast as she could. She jammed a pulse pistol in Reaper’s face and pulled the trigger. He swore and vanished in a cloud of smoke, billowing out of the way of the bullets. As he did so Widowmaker grabbed Tracer again, pulled her forward and sprinted for the kitchen door. They tumbled through it, she slammed it behind her and looked around wildly for something to bar it with.

A waist-high freezer cabinet was all she could find. She shoved it into place just as something hit the door _hard_ , slamming it against the freezer and making its hinges splinter.

“ _Stop prolonging the inevitable, Widowmaker,_ ” she heard Reaper growl from the other side.

“You’re offering me a choice between dying fighting, or just dying,” she called back. “What do you think?”

“ _No. I’m offering you a choice between a quick and a slow death._ ”

She didn’t respond. The door slammed again.

The kitchen was a small room a few metres square, with an array of cookers along one wall, some sinks in the middle and – _merci, Dieu, merci_ – a small window on the far wall. Widowmaker could see the red glow that permeated the Underworld seeping through it.

She turned back to Tracer, who looked ready to wet herself. “Please, miss,” she whimpered, cowering as Widowmaker approached her, her feet slipping on the smooth metal floor as she tried to crawl away, “I just wanna go home…”

 _She’s… gone back to when she was a child_ , Widowmaker realised. _And on my account._ Something about that made her guts twist.

She crouched down next to her and tried to pat her shoulder reassuringly. Behind her the door creaked and groaned as Reaper slammed it again.

“Lena?” she said softly.

Tracer nodded, wide-eyed.

“I’m on your side,” she said, hoping she sounded convincing. “There’s, ah… a bad man. Looking for us. But we’re _not_ going to let him get us.”

Tracer gulped, sniffled back a tear.

Widowmaker checked behind her. Thick black smoke was starting to curl under the door, seeping through the gaps around it.

“I want my mum,” Tracer whimpered.

“And we’re going to go and get her,” Widowmaker said. “You just have to trust me.”

Before she really knew what she was doing, she gave Tracer a quick hug. “I won’t let anything happen to you, _cherie_ ,” she whispered into her ear.

Tracer, still looking scared out of her mind, nodded.

“Now _run_.”

Hand-in-hand again, Widowmaker charged towards the window as the smoke behind them began to coalesce once more. She skidded to a halt in front of the window, shoved it open, began to hoist Tracer through it.

“ _Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide._ ”

A shotgun round blasted the wall inches from her head. Tracer, halfway through the window, yelped and toppled forward, disappearing out of sight. Widowmaker began to follow her, clambering up and through.

“ _You really should have surrendered._ ”

A hand closed around her ankle.

“ _But, I must admit, I’m not surprised you didn’t._ ”

Widowmaker screamed as Reaper began to drag her back inside. She kicked out desperately with her free leg, her hands scrabbled for purchase on the smooth wall outside.

“ _Ready to go down fighting?_ ”

“ _Pas encore_ ,” Widowmaker gasped, raised her arm and fired the grapple gun on her wrist. The grapple shot out, caught on a neighbouring building and yanked her forward. Reaper roared in frustration as her ankle slipped from his grasp.

She hit the ground outside the bar hard and it knocked the wind from her. Reaper fired after her and his gunshots raised puffs of dust as she rolled to one side, taking cover behind a stack of crates. The street stretched away in both directions and she tried to remember the way back to the surface lift. Next to her, Tracer hunkered down and tried not to cry.

And then…

_Clunk-WHAM!_

...Tracer blinked. Widowmaker looked over at her, wondering which Oxton she’d been saddled with this time. Tracer met her eyes, and beamed.

“Hello, love!”

“You’re back?” Widowmaker gasped in relief.

“Cavalry’s here!” Tracer cheered, snatching her pulse pistols back from Widowmaker. “Follow me!”

She blinked away in a flash, a streak of blue shooting down the street. Widowmaker fired her grappling hook again and sped after her.

They hurtled down the Underworld’s streets and alleys, putting as much distance as they could between them and the bar. Tracer seemed to know where she was going, blinking across rooftops and jinking down alleyways, and Widowmaker simply did her best to follow her. The streets around the bar were empty, the people nearby having fled when they heard the first gunshots, but the further they got the more the streets and rooftops became busy again and they had to slow down to force their way through the crowds.

After a moment Tracer stopped outside the door to a ramshackle house on the corner of a large market square and after a momentary glance around she ducked inside. Widowmaker followed.

“Sssh!” Tracer said, pressing her back to the wall and looking up at the ceiling above them.

Widowmaker looked at her.

“There’s an ambush in the marketplace up ahead,” Tracer whispered. “Talon agents on the rooftops.”

“What? How…”

“We _don’t_ wanna walk into it,” Tracer continued, checking her pulse pistols. “Gets a bit hairy, trust me.”

“Have you…?” Widowmaker frowned.

“What?”

“Rewound? Again?”

Tracer fixed Widowmaker with a strange look, then grinned and laughed quietly. “Not exactly, love. I’ll explain once we’re in the clear. Now follow me!”

Quietly, they crept across the inside of the house – it was a good job whoever owned the place wasn’t in, Widowmaker thought – towards a set of stairs. Tracer stopped at the bottom of them and glanced up.

“Up the stairs, on the right, two Talon guys,” she whispered. “I’ll take left, you take right. Got it?”

Widowmaker nodded.

They crept up the stairs together, took a right and found themselves on the roof of the building overlooking the market square. Two soldiers in black body armour were crouched on the edge of the roof, watching the square below through the sights of their rifles. As they got closer Widowmaker could hear the radio chatter coming from their helmets.

“Lead to all units, targets confirmed heading our way. Keep your eyes peeled, lads,”

“Copy that, Lead. They won’t get past us, sir.”

Widowmaker almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

She planted a foot in the small of the man on the right’s back, reached down and wrenched his head round. She felt the crackle of his neck bones giving way. He didn’t even have time to cry out. To her left came a quiet _pop_ as Tracer buried the muzzle of one of her pistols on the back of the other soldier’s head and pulled the trigger.

“Sorry, fellas,” Tracer whispered quietly. “Right,” she said, picking up one of the soldier’s rifles and handing it to Widowmaker. “This is your time to shine, love. If I tell you where they are, can you take ‘em down?”

“Just point them out,” Widowmaker said, lying on her stomach and resting the stock of the gun against her shoulder. It was no Widow’s Kiss, she decided, but it would serve well enough.

“Two on the rooftop over there, waiting for us to come down the street.”

“I see them.”

 _Crack!_ On a rooftop across the square a man in a mask and body armour collapsed backwards in a spray of blood. The merc next to him looked around in a panic for a second, dived for cover behind an air conditioning unit but – _crack!_ – a second bullet met him halfway and he sprawled lifelessly on the roof.

“Next?”

In the square below, people were beginning to scream. There was the thunder of footsteps as humans and omnics alike ran for the exits.

“Guy on the balcony, two storeys up, on our left.”

“ _Je le vois_.”

The gun barked again and a black-clad figure toppled into the square below. The few people who hadn’t already fled the square started to run.

“Any more?”

“By now the guy with the rocket launcher should have woken up.”

“ _What_?”

“Where is he… come on, come on… there he is! On your right, in the doorway down there!”

Widowmaker shifted her aim, sighted, and found herself looking straight down the gaping barrel of a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher being pointed directly at her.

_Merde.  
_

The Talon merc had the drop on her, there was no way she could kill him before he fired the damn thing. She could almost _see_ his finger tightening on the launcher’s trigger. By the time she shot him, the rocket would be on its way…

The rocket launcher spat fire. Widowmaker’s rifle roared. The Talon merc and the doorway he was stood in disappeared in a cloud of flame with an ear-splitting noise.

For a moment there was an unearthly silence in the Underworld.

“What?” Tracer asked disbelievingly, looking down at the smoking crater where the Talon merc had been.

“I didn’t have time to kill him before he fired,” Widowmaker said coolly.

“So you shot the _rocket_? Hah! Love, you’re one in a million,” Tracer grinned.

“I do my job. Is that all of them?”

“Should be,” Tracer said, standing up and offering Widowmaker a helping hand. “Let’s get out of here!”

“Now, would you explain how you knew about all this?” Widowmaker demanded as she let Tracer help her to her feet.

“What, you ain’t figured it out yet?” Tracer said as she led Widowmaker down off the roof and back into the maze of streets and alleyways that made up the Underworld. They passed a few staring omnics who had taken cover from the fight and Tracer stopped briefly to make sure they were all okay.

“What was it I said back in the bar, when my accelerator started playing up? Past, present and _future_ me, wasn’t it?” she said, turning back to Widowmaker as they started walking again.

Widowmaker’s eyes went wide. “Are you…”

“Yup. Lena Oxton, fifty-one years of age, at your service.” She did a ridiculous little bow.

“You… do not look your age.”

“It’s called chronal dissociation, love. Different versions of me from along my timeline are getting dumped into this body. She’s going to have the mother of all headaches when she comes back.” She sighed. “I remember this day a bit too well – though my version of it went a bit worse.”

“How much worse?”

Tracer held up her hands. “Let’s just say it’s nice to have two of these again.” She shrugged and jerked a thumb back at the square. “That ambush was _nasty_.”

Widowmaker stared at her.

In a moment Tracer’s demeanour changed and she became deadly serious. She stopped walking and turned to fully face Widowmaker. “Right, love, now listen to me carefully. Any moment now my accelerator’s gonna go wonky again and I’ll be gone.” She pointed along the street towards the sheer metal wall of the Underworld. “Lift back to the surface is about a hundred metres that way. Talon doesn’t know where the safehouse up top is yet, but they _will_ find us after three days, maybe less. Make sure you call Winston the minute you get back there, tell him to get his arse in gear.” She paused, thinking. “Anything else? Oh! Yeah.”

She shoved her pulse pistols back into Widowmaker’s hands. “Ditch that Talon rifle, you won’t need it on the way back. Talon’s too busy licking their wounds to follow us now and they keep tracking chips in all their gear. But listen to me very carefully, love. _Do not_ let Tracer – let _me_ , I suppose – have these guns back until you’re out of that lift and back on the surface. Understand?”

She might have spoken Dutch for all Widowmaker understood, but she nodded anyway. “Why?”

A dark expression flitted across Tracer’s face. “She’ll – well, I’ll – try-” she started to say.

 _Clunk-WHAM!_ The accelerator misfired again, spewing out a burst of white light, and Tracer’s expression went blank. She staggered sideways and Widowmaker caught her before she collapsed.

“You again!” Tracer spluttered as she came to. She gripped Widowmaker’s shoulders. “Listen, my name is Lena Oxton, I’m an Overwatch test pilot, my plane’s malfunctioned…”

Wordlessly, Widowmaker turned and led her onwards.

“If you put me in touch with Overwatch I’m sure they’ll reward you for getting me back to them safely,” Tracer said a little bit plaintively.

“I’ll do that.”

“You will? Oh, thank you!”

Tracer carried on babbling but Widowmaker didn’t pay an attention as they walked on. She could see the lift shaft looming above them now, a trellis of steel beams and cables that hung down from the steel sky above like some mechanical vine.

_Don’t give her the guns back? Why?_

It didn’t take them long to reach the lift doors and Widowmaker jabbed the button as Tracer bounced on her heels behind her. It had only been a few hours since they rode it down, worried about nothing more than getting something to eat, she realised. Felt like days.

“I can’t imagine how I ended up in Underworld!” Tracer continued as the lift doors closed behind them and it began to climb. “The Slipstream’s teleportation matrix must have _really_ messed up!” She shook her head in amazement. “Good job I didn’t materialise inside a wall or something…”

Maybe if she had her guns, and they were attacked, she’d shoot someone by accident? Was that it? But the other Tracer had said Talon wouldn’t come after them. Something else, then?

“Hey… you do know you’re purple, right? Are you okay?”

She was glad she’d had some previous experience of blotting Tracer out. There was something she wasn’t thinking of, Widowmaker thought in frustration.

 _Clunk-WHAM!_ The inside of the lift was lit up like a flashbulb had gone off. _  
_

All of a sudden she remembered something Tracer had said in the bar.

_“Love, if I’d had my way, they’d have let me blow your head off the moment we captured you.”_

_Different versions in the same body.  
_

_Oh, no…_

She span around, only to be confronted with an expression of such hatred she actually took a step back.

“Hello _, love_ ,” Tracer snarled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Widowmaker just cannot catch a break, can she?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a shorter chapter to wrap things up for this part of the fic. Hope you like it!

For a moment there was a dead silence in the lift. Tracer and Widowmaker eyed each other, one with a vicious glare, one with as close to fear as her conditioning would allow.

“Tracer? Listen to me, we’re-”

“Shut up.”

“ _Listen to_ -”

“ _Shut up_.”

Widowmaker opened her mouth to yell about chronal dissociation, Talon, the Underworld, anything to stave off the inevitable. But before she could there was a flash of blue light and Tracer blinked up to her, slamming her back into the lift’s wall, knocking the wind out of her with a blow to her stomach and clenching her other hand around her neck.

“You don’t get to talk,” Tracer hissed, her face inches from Widowmaker’s. “Not after all you’ve done.”

Widowmaker scrabbled at the hand around her neck, fought for breath.

“Mondatta, Ana, Gérard… how many others? You know how many people you’ve taken from us? From _me_?” She slammed her fist into Widowmaker’s stomach again and tightened her grip.

A normal person would already be weak, their vision fading, extremities going numb. But Widowmaker needed less oxygen to function. _Small mercies_ , a detached part of her thought.

“ _Please… just listen…_ ”

“To _what_? You gonna beg for mercy? Really? You think you’re gonna get it?”

 _Perhaps_ , Widowmaker thought, and brought her knee up hard into Tracer’s midsection. The other woman doubled over with a muffled “ _oof_!” and released her grip. Widowmaker tried to follow it up with a kick but Tracer blinked out of the way, into the opposite corner of the lift, and glared at her.

Both of them paused to catch their breath, Tracer coughing and Widowmaker heaving for air.

 _She doesn’t know I have her guns_ , Widowmaker realised. _And the right Tracer has to come back eventually._

All she had to do was wait. Easier said than done.

“Want to play rough then?” Tracer grinned as she straightened up and cracked her knuckles. Widowmaker didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone grin quite like that before. “Fine by me, love.”

She blinked again, straight at Widowmaker, and this time she didn’t even stop to attack her, just used her momentum to tackle her and send her flying. The back of Widowmaker’s head hit the metal wall behind her and she saw stars. She staggered to one side, off balance and disorientated, and Tracer took the opportunity to swing a right hook into her face. Widowmaker tried to duck it, failed, and Tracer’s knuckles smashed into her temple with a blow that briefly stunned her.

“There’s one,” Tracer snarled.

Widowmaker toppled to the floor, her ears ringing and her mouth full of the coppery taste of blood. Tracer gave her a swift kick to the ribs as she fell, making her gasp in pain.

“There’s two. Three strikes…” Tracer continued, winding up a kick aimed at Widowmaker’s neck.

She kicked. Widowmaker threw up her hands, caught Tracer’s foot, twisted it hard. Tracer bellowed in pain and toppled backward, landing hard on the lift’s cold floor.

“And I’m out?” Widowmaker gasped, rolling away from Tracer as she twisted on the floor and tried to scrabble to her feet on her injured leg. The urge to fight back properly was strong, Widowmaker realised as she got up, wiping blood from her lips. Tracer’s anger was making her sloppy. If Widowmaker wanted to, she might be able to get past her defences, jab a fist into something important, maybe even kill…

Was that Talon’s conditioning talking, she wondered, or just primitive survival instinct?

Either way she didn’t have much time to think about it. Tracer was up on her feet again.

“Oxton, _pour l'amour de Dieu_!” Widowmaker barked. “Chronal dissociation! That’s what you said!”

Tracer glowered at her.

“You rewound,” Widowmaker babbled, speaking as fast as she could while Tracer was still letting her talk. “Your time _est cassé_!” She didn’t even notice she’d used the French for ‘broken’. All she cared about was getting Tracer to just _listen_ to her.

“Yeah. I know.”

Widowmaker’s heart nearly stopped. “… _what_?”

“We’re wearing weird clothes. This ‘aint your prison cell. Ten minutes ago I was getting ready for bed. I know I’ve timeskipped, love. _I just don’t care_.”

Widowmaker barely had time to register that before Tracer charged again. She didn’t blink this time, just came straight at her, ducking a desperate blow and grabbing Widowmaker’s overcoat with both hands. And then she blinked, and Widowmaker experienced a few gut-wrenching moments of being dragged forcibly through time, the rest of the world spinning around her, before they materialised back into reality and she found herself being smashed onto the floor. She yelped and bit her tongue, felt a warm rush in her mouth. Her fist lashed out, caught Tracer square on the nose and splattered blood all over her face and goggles. Tracer howled, blinked again, spinning Widowmaker through the air and back down onto the metal of the lift.

Through the haze of pain and the ringing in her ears, Widowmaker heard a plastic clatter as she collapsed.

“Oh, _hello_ ,” Tracer panted, out of breath, behind her. Widowmaker twisted round and groaned in horror. Tracer’s pistols had fallen out of her coat.

“Now where did you get these, love?”

Widowmaker dived for them but there was no way she was fast enough. A streak of blue snatched them up off the floor and then Tracer was stood over her, guns akimbo, victory in her eyes.

Not for the first time, Widowmaker acted completely on instinct.

Her arm shot up, wrist-out, and there was the high-pitched _whirr_ of her grapple extending. The end of it bit into Tracer’s arm and held fast. Tracer yelped, first in pain and then in shock, as the mechanism on Widowmaker’s wrist went into reverse and yanked her down. She tumbled forward, the hand snared by the grapple dropping the gun it held, and she collapsed on top of Widowmaker.

A hand found Tracer’s throat. The muzzle of a gun was shoved under Widowmaker’s jaw. They froze.

“ _Let go_ ,” Tracer hissed.

“And if I do not?”

Tracer thumbed something on her pulse pistol and it made a dangerous whining noise.

“Your call.”

Every bone in Widowmaker’s body was screaming at her not to give up her one bargaining chip. But Tracer could put a round through her skull long before she could crush Tracer’s windpipe. She let go.

Tracer blinked and she was standing again. Widowmaker stared down the barrel of the gun.

 “How’s it feel, huh?” Tracer gasped, wiping blood off her face with her free hand. “Being on the wrong end of one of these for once?”

 _Keep her talking._ “You think you are the first to point a gun at me, _chérie_?”

“Nah. Just the last.”

“ _Think_. You know you are dissociated, Oxton. At least let me explain the situation.”

“Nothing to explain. You’re going down.”

Widowmaker sat up against the wall of the lift. Her left eye was starting to swell where Tracer had hit it, she nursed it with a free hand.

“If I was, why haven’t you pulled the trigger yet?”

Tracer didn’t respond to that, just licked her lips and clenched her jaw. Widowmaker decided to go for broke.

“You don’t want to shoot me, Lena.”

Tracer pulled the trigger. Her pistol roared and a round sparked off the wall mere centimetres from Widowmaker’s head.

Adrenaline burned through Widowmaker’s veins and she desperately tried to keep her composure.

“I want to,” Tracer said. “You better believe I want to.”

For a moment she kept Widowmaker in her sights, trigger finger trembling.

“But I’m not going to,” she sighed, sounding bitter, and lowered the gun.

Widowmaker threw composure to the wind and breathed out in relief.

“And you wanna know why?” Tracer growled. “Because you would. And I’m _not_ gonna turn out like you.”

Widowmaker permitted herself a strange, sad smile. “I might have once, _chérie_. _Mais à present_? I’m not sure.” _  
_

“Yeah, right,” Tracer huffed.

 _Clunk-WHAM!_ Her accelerator burned bright again, leaving afterimages in Widowmaker’s eyes as she screwed them shut. She hoped it was for the last time.

When she opened her eyes, blinking away the white spot the accelerator’s flare had left, Tracer was standing there limply with all the colour drained from her face.

“Hello, love” she grinned weakly. “What’d I miss?”

“Nothing much,” Widowmaker drawled. “Which Tracer are you?”

“Last I remember is tellin’ you my accelerator was about to go on the fritz. I’m the real deal, love, don’t worry.”

“ _Bien_.” Widowmaker started clambering to her feet, wincing in pain.

Tracer took a few steps forward. “Argh,” she moaned as she extended a hand and helped Widowmaker to her feet. “Why does _everything_ hurt?” She looked closer at Widowmaker – bloody nose, split lip, bruised eye and neck – and gasped.

“Love, you look _awful_! What happened?”

“I assure you that you are no better,” Widowmaker said. “And it is a…” she searched for the words in English, “… a long story.”

“Talon still after us?”

“I have been assured they are not.”

“By who?” Tracer asked, slightly suspiciously.

“You. From the future, apparently.”

“…oh. God, I hate time travel sometimes.”

Above them there was a grinding of gears. The lift slowed to a halt and the doors rattled open.

“Come on, love. Let’s go home.”

 

* * *

 

It was early morning, just before sunrise, by the time they got back onto the streets of London. They made their way back towards the high-rise, Widowmaker filling Tracer in on what had happened.

Once she was done, Tracer stopped at the next corner shop they passed and bought a pack of plasters, some cotton wool, and a bottle of cheap vodka.

“You two alright?” the shopkeeper asked her as she paid, looking with concern at the two battered and bruised women in front of him. “You, ah… want me to call the police?”

“Police are the last ones I want to see,” Tracer replied, and the man just nodded knowingly.

“Well, look after yourselves,” he called after them as they left.

“Does anyone in this city trust the police?” Widowmaker asked as they walked on.

Tracer snorted. “Oh, yeah. Anyone with a penthouse and a million-quid bank balance, for a start. Other than that? Nah, not really.” She sighed. “I’m sure there’re plenty of honest coppers.” She glanced around them, at brick terraces, dingy streets, high-rises and grey skies. “They just never send ‘em round to places like here.”

They got back to the safehouse just as the sun struggled over the horizon. Widowmaker watched it stain the eastern horizon pink and orange as Tracer dabbed at her face with a cotton wool ball soaked in vodka.

“Hold still, love.”

Widowmaker hissed as the alcohol stung. “Why couldn’t you have bought medical alcohol?” she asked irritably. Modern disinfectants usually had anaesthetics mixed with them to stop the pain.

“We’re on a budget, love. And I can’t drink medical-grade stuff.”

Widowmaker looked round in surprise and nearly got an eyeful of cotton for her trouble. “You are going to get _drunk_?”

Tracer looked at her with hollow eyes and a smile that didn’t quite reach them. “Just spent a few hours sharing a head with a bunch of other versions of me. And then tried to kill my friend. Damn right I’m drinking myself to sleep in a bit.”

 _Friend_. Widowmaker said nothing. Didn’t really know what to say, so she just watched the sun climb a bit higher, washing the tips of London’s skyscrapers yellow and white.

At last Tracer was done with her injuries, taping the last plaster to a cut under Widowmaker’s eye.

“Want me to kiss it better?”

“Don’t start.”

Tracer swigged from the bottle as they swapped places and Widowmaker began cleaning her wounds. Her eyelids started to droop almost immediately.

“Chronal dissociation’s weird,” she said after a while. “The me’s that come through don’t remember much afterwards. Half the time I just write it off as a weird dream.”

Widowmaker grunted non-committally, busy sticking a plaster to a cut that was her doing.

“Like this one I had about a month ago. Just after we brought you in actually,” she added, taking another swig. “I don’t remember my dreams much. All I remembered of this one was holding a gun to your head.”

Widowmaker stopped, stared at her.

“I mentioned it to Zenyatta a day or two later and we got talking, about Mondatta and you and the Shambali and all that. He talked me out of wanting to, y’know, do you in. Showed me it’d come to no good. I think the exact words he said were… what was it? Oh, yeah: kill someone before they can do good, and you share the burden of all their wrongdoing.” She shrugged and giggled. “Or somethin’ like that. It always sounds cooler when he says stuff like that.”

She took another slug from the vodka bottle.

“Like I say, didn’t think much of the dream at the time. Guess now I know better.”

She was quiet for a little while. Widowmaker cleaned another cut and Tracer hissed.

“I had this other dream when I was five.” The vodka was taking effect now, she was slurring her words. Widowmaker only half-listened. “Woke up screaming my head off. My folks used to tease me about it for years afterwards.” She chuckled and shook her head.

“They said I went on, and on and on, about how a purple lady saved me from an evil man.”

And before she really knew what was happening, Widowmaker had been swept up in a hug. Tracer’s hair tickled the side of her cheek. She blushed and awkwardly tried to hug Tracer back.

“I know I’ve said it before, but thanks, love,” Tracer whispered.

Nowhere in Talon’s conditioning and training was an adequate response, but deep in Amélie Lacroix’s memories was something she felt might be the right thing to say.

“ _De rien, chérie_.”

It was strange. With London gleaming beyond the window and Tracer in her arms, for some reason she could not quite fathom, Widowmaker’s heart seemed to beat just a little bit warmer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tune in next time for some backstories! (Or, my headcanons, at any rate...)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief interlude chapter showing what some of the other characters are getting up to before we carry on. Hope you like it!  
> Also I just want to say thank you to everyone who has left kudos and/or a comment on this fic so far! It means the world to me and I certainly never expected this to get the attention it has. I haven't been able to reply to comments recently but I assure you, I appreciate every one of them.

A chilly autumn morning in London was a warm sunrise in Gibraltar. Bright sunlight glittered off the surface of the Mediterranean, lit up passing supertankers and hydrofoils shuttling out into the Atlantic. High overhead a few cargo dirigibles droned through the air like bloated clouds.

Buried deep in the Rock of Gibraltar, that enormous hunk of limestone that had made this tiny peninsula such an attractive place to build fortresses over the centuries, beneath cold rock and trickling groundwater, inches of steel-armoured walls and whirring air conditioning units, the heat of the dawning day was a distant memory.

Soldier 76 stepped out of the high-speed elevator and into the cold air of the Watchpoint’s lower floors. His feet carried him forward almost without him thinking about it, tracing the corridors of the base like it had only been yesterday he’d left.

Eventually he came to a door, swiped his access card against the security panel next to it, and ducked inside as it hissed open.

“Looking to be a nice day topside,” he said to the room’s other occupant. “Should’ve brought my sun lounger.”

Winston turned to look at him with an arched eyebrow. “Like you’d ever take the day off.”

“Makes two of us, then. Can’t recall the last time I saw you go up for a breath of fresh air.”

Winston sighed. “That’s more for practicality’s sake, I’m afraid. They’ve turned this place into a tourist attraction – spend a euro or two to gawk at it through a telescope. I’m told the old launch facilities look quite impressive when the sun’s behind them.” He chuckled sadly to himself. “Not sure how the tourists would react to seeing a six-foot silverback gorilla swinging around the place.”

For a moment 76 thought of Winston in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, kicking back in a deck chair with a drink with a cocktail umbrella in it by his side. He fought to suppress a bark of laughter.

“At least it’d make that couple of euros worth it,” he said instead. Winston smiled and rolled his eyes.

“So what’s the news?” 76 asked, dragging the conversation towards the reason he’d come down here.

Winston rubbed his chin and turned away from 76, back to the banks of computers and screens that took up the entire back room of his workshop. 76 took a few steps forward, taking care not to tread on any of the banana skins or peanut butter lids that littered the floor of Winston’s workshop.

“Nothing good, I’m afraid,” Winston murmured, clattering away at a keyboard. “I just got off the phone with Lena. She and Amélie had a run-in with Talon last night.”

“Casualties?” 76 growled.

“A lot of Talon and a few bystanders.”

“Damn. And our people?”

“You mean Lena and Amélie?” Winston huffed, glaring over at 76. “They do have names, you know.”

“Right. So? Injured?”

“A bit battered, but they’ll both live. But that’s not the real issue – this is.”

Winston pulled up a pair of news articles on the screen in front of him. 76 leaned in to get a closer look. On the left, headlines about an ongoing manhunt for those responsible for the assassination two days ago. And on the right, reports of black-clad police ‘special units’ conducting raids on addresses across London.

“The British government announced a few hours ago they’re increasing police presence at all airports and docks. Talon’s kicking in the door of all our old safehouses in London and by the sound of it the British have given them _carte blanche_ to do it. The newsnets are calling it the biggest manhunt in the 21 st century.” Winston groaned and ran a hand over his face. “The net’s tightening by the minute and I don’t even _know_ how we’re going to get those two home.”

76 didn’t say anything immediately, just read and re-read the news articles.

“Seems like we kicked the hornet’s nest,” he muttered at last with a hint of satisfaction. “Told you we’d hit Talon where it hurts.”

“Is that all you care about?” Winston snapped. “Hurting Talon? Has it not occurred to you that if Talon catches Lena and Amélie, they’ll hurt us right back?”

“Of course it has,” 76 snarled. “And I think our job just got a lot easier.”

“What? How?”

“Well, shall we run down the list?” 76 started counting on his fingers. “Option one: fly them back. But the airports are locked down and they’ll shoot any unidentified planes out of the sky. Option two: get a boat. But the same will happen. The docks are all being watched, and we don’t even have a boat of our own to send. Option three: mail them home, if you can find a box.”

If there was one thing he’d never expected to hear from 76’s mouth, Winston thought distantly, it was an attempt at humour.

“Which leaves us with option four,” 76 continued, sounding slightly put out that Winston hadn’t laughed. “Take the train.”

“The Channel Tunnel? That’ll be guarded as well. In fact, that’ll be even _more_ guarded because Talon will probably have thought of this too!”

76 shrugged. “It’s all we’ve got. That and one other advantage.”

“Oh?”

“Everyone’ll be trying to stop those two getting out. They won’t care nearly as much as stopping people getting _in_.”

“And that means…”

“If we play our cards right, we might be able to get them some backup.”

Winston mulled that over for a few moments. “I’m still not sure I like this.”

“You don’t have to like it, you just have to help make it happen.”

There was a moment’s pause.

“And besides,” 76 continued, “we might be able to turn the situation to our advantage.”

Winston frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Just that if things do go south during the operation, and someone were to take a bullet, I don’t think anyone would really be shocked.”

Another silence.

“I cannot believe I am hearing this,” Winston muttered quietly. “ _What_ are you suggesting?”

76’s face, or what little of it Winston could see above the man’s faceplate, turned cruel.

“This is a mission to recover Overwatch agents. Widowmaker is not an Overwatch agent. Last I checked, she was working for the bad guys.”

“Because they forced her to!”

“No, because they brainwashed her to. There’s a difference. People who were forced don’t go back, but people who were brainwashed might. She claims she’ll work for us but I don’t trust her for a second.”

Winston just stared at him, trying his best not to lose his cool.

“This… this is _Amélie Lacroix_ we’re talking about!” he spluttered. “Gérard’s wife! Our friend, not some mindless assassin, our friend who I thought we were supposed to care about! For God’s sake, Morrison, you were at their wedding, you went to their funerals, you can’t… you can’t just pretend she means nothing to you!”

If 76 held his head just right, the angle made his mask look like it was glaring at someone. He did that now. Winston held his gaze. 

“You’re right,” he said after a moment. With a sigh he walked over to one of Winston’s chairs and sat down heavily. 

With a click he unlatched the visor from his face and for the first time since ‘Soldier 76’ had answered the recall, Winston looked into the face of his old friend. 

“I can’t pretend that she means nothing to me. Because she genuinely does mean nothing to me.” 

Winston tore his eyes away from the livid scar that bisected Morrison’s face, looked at the rest of him with faint horror. “What?” 

“I cared about Amélie,” Morrison said quietly. “It hit us all hard when Talon took her. Harder when we thought for a while she’d gone back to them.” He looked up at the ceiling with faraway eyes. “You know, when I first read the report that she’d been brainwashed, back when we finally worked it out… I didn’t feel sad, or horrified, or anything like that. That came later. Right then, when it finally clicked… I felt relief.” 

He looked back down at Winston with an old man’s smile, regret and hindsight and remorse all bundled up into a wan curve of his lips. 

“Because now I could kill her, if I had to. Because she wasn’t Amélie Lacroix. All that history I had with her was wiped away, all those good memories counted for nothing. She was dead. And Widowmaker, well, I could care less about Widowmaker.” 

Winston shook his head slowly. “That doesn’t sound like the Jack Morrison I used to know.” 

“Morrison died in Zurich, Winston. It was all over the news.” 

“And Soldier 76?” 

“Is what’s left.” 

Winston fell silent. 

“Maybe once I would have trusted her,” Morrison continued. “Or tried to get her back. But I’ve seen where that road leads. And it ends at Zurich, gunning down people who you thought were your closest friends. I’m here to take down Talon. That’s what I do now. If we can use her to do that then I’m in. If we can’t…” He made a gun with his fingers and pretended to fire it. “And if you’re smart, Winston, you’ll follow my lead.” 

“Then I guess I’m an idiot,” Winston shot back. “Because we’re bringing them both back, and _that’s that_.” 

“And if they find a way to turn her back to their side? If you wake up dead a few nights later because of her? Like Gérard did?” 

“Then that’s on me.” 

Morrison sighed irritably and looked at Winston almost condescendingly. “The woman who murdered Lacroix, put Ana out of commission, killed how many of our friends over the years… and you’re telling me she doesn’t deserve a bullet.” 

“You know,” Winston said coldly, “I did say you don’t sound like the Jack Morrison I knew. I think you sound like someone else I used to know, though.” 

Morrison folded his arms. “Who’s that?” 

“Gabriel Reyes.” 

There was a deathly silence in Winston’s lab. 

Morrison’s fists clenched and Winston wondered whether he was about to attack him. Normally he’d be confident of winning in a one-on-one fight against a human, but if he’d learned one thing at Overwatch, it had been not to bet against Jack Morrison. 

But all he did was shoot Winston a poisonous look and jam his visor back onto his face as he stood up from his chair. 

“Get them back, then,” 76 spat, turned on his heel, and stormed out of the lab.

 _Them, plural_ , Winston thought as he turned back to his computer screens. _Guess it’s a start._

 

* * *

 

A sweltering day over Gibraltar faded into a humid dusk. More ships crowded the straits beyond. Spaceplanes flitted through the orange sky like darts, racing off to the great cities of Africa and Europe. The lights of the Hercules Line, that non-stop express from Morocco, up through Tangier, across the great bridge that spans the sea and into Gibraltar and Spain beyond, twinkled as yet another mag-lev train shot by.

Fareeha found Angela in the suit room.

It was a name they’d given to an old hangar in Watchpoint: Gibraltar that everyone had started using to store their armour. Too bulky to keep with the rest of their personal belongings, they were lined up in a row along one wall. Reinhardt’s Crusader and Hana’s MEKA loomed over the rest at either end, like they were stood on watch. Winston’s suit hunched over as if it had spotted something interesting, Zarya’s armour hung in a bulky harness. Near the centre was her own Raptora, stood to attention. Next to it was Angela’s Valkyrie suit, floating gracefully in an anti-grav field.

Overwatch’s ghosts, it looked like, lined up on one last parade. Fitting, Fareeha thought. In her mind, if the ghosts were coming back, it was for a good reason.

And there was Angela, sat on an upturned crate with a computer on her lap and with a steaming mug by her side, tapping away at the keyboard with a disgruntled expression. A snake’s nest of cables emerged from a port in her laptop and plugged into sockets all over the Valkyrie next to her.

“So!” Fareeha called, strolling over to her. “What brings the good doctor out of her lab so early?”

Angela looked up at the sound of her voice and smiled warmly. It was the kind of smile Fareeha lived for.

To grow up with posters of this woman and her comrades on her bedroom walls, to end up working with her in a reformed Overwatch, to foolishly start to develop feelings for her only to have them reciprocated – it was a heady experience, to say the least.

Angela sighed miserably and gestured towards her laptop and the tangle of cables. “Upgrades,” she said. “The bane of my existence. Every piece of software on this thing is in constant need of repair!”

“Hmm?” Fareeha murmured, reaching where Angela was sat and running her hand idly over the smooth carapace of the Valkyrie. She wasn’t entirely sure that was how software worked but kept the thought to herself. “What are you doing to it?”

“Everything under the sun, it seems like,” Angela said. “The comms gear needs fine-tuning, the triage subsystems need a workover, the propulsion units need new drivers…” She threw her hands up in despair. “And if we’re going to stay here, I need to bring the air-conditioning back on-line too.”

For someone born and raised in the scorching summers of Egypt the depths of Watchpoint: Gibraltar were pleasantly cool, bordering on a bit chilly. Fareeha kept this to herself as well.

Although clearly not well enough. Angela caught the look on her face.

“I’m used to glacial lakes and alpine forests, Fareeha, I’m not built for the Mediterranean,” she said, theatrically wiping sweat from her brow. “Whenever I go up to the surface I feel like I’m about to _melt_.”

“Poor dear,” Fareeha murmured, her voice dripping with good-natured mockery. She sat down on the cold concrete floor, her back against the crate Angela was sat on and her head resting on Angela’s knee. “If only there was something I could do to take your mind off of things.”

“If only,” Angela smirked, and ran her hand idly through Fareeha’s hair. She carried on typing with her free hand. Fareeha peered to look at the screen and didn’t understand a word of what was written there.

“You know, the longer you stay down there, the longer it’ll take me to finish working,” Angela added, tracing the rim of Fareeha’s ear gently with a fingertip.

“Not my problem,” Fareeha smirked. “Besides, it’s comfortable down here.”

Angela just chuckled quietly.

They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, punctuated by the quiet clatter of Angela’s fingers on the keyboard and the occasional _whir-whine_ from the Valkyrie as servos and motors were powered up and spun down.

“Did I even ask,” Angela murmured at last, “why you’re down here?”

“You did not.”

“Ugh. Sorry. I got a bit… distracted,” she said, waving a hand at the computer screen.

Fareeha smiled, shifted her head on Angela’s knee a bit. “It doesn’t matter.”

“So why _are_ you down here, then?”

“You think I wasn’t looking for you?” Fareeha grinned.

“I know you. If you were actively ‘looking’ for me,” Angela said, “I doubt I’d still have my shirt on now you’ve found me.”

Fareeha tried to look offended and didn’t quite manage. “You’ve got quite a low opinion of me, Dr Ziegler.”

“Just a realistic one, Captain Amari.”

 “For your information, Winston asked me to come and check on the Raptora suit.”

“He worried it’ll have escaped or something?”

Fareeha sniggered. “Hardly. He wants it combat-ready for a mission that’s coming up.”

“Well in that case, shouldn’t you be… I don’t know what you have to do with that thing, but shouldn’t you be doing it?” Angela asked. “Not,” she added quickly, her hand slipping down Fareeha’s neck to rest gently on her shoulder, “that I really object to how you’re spending your time instead.”

“Watch and learn,” Fareeha said with a smug smile. “Raptora Mark IV, voiceprint Captain Fareeha Amari, confirm.”

The effect was immediate. The Raptora suit, which had been stood as still as a statue just a few metres away, suddenly sprang into life. It jerked fully upright as if it was on a parade ground and its empty helmet swivelled to stare dead-eyed at the two women next to it.

“ _Raptora Mark IV, active. Voiceprint confirmed. Welcome, Captain Fareeha Amari._ ” Its voice was cold, electronic, harsh.

Angela stared wide-eyed.

“Begin general diagnostic check,” Fareeha called.

“ _Command confirmed,_ ” the suit droned.

It swivelled its head back-and-forth, took a step forward, flexed its shoulders. “ _Motor-assist servos, activated._ ” The jet exhausts on its back glowed cherry-red for a moment. “ _Flight systems, activated. Fuel level, full._ ” Hatches popped open in its wrists and thighs, missiles briefly popped their nosecones out like they were testing the air. “ _Weapons systems, online._ ” It paused, bleeping to itself. “ _Communications array, activated. Software updates… not required. All systems nominal. Prepare for pilot insertion?_ ”

“Not necessary, suit. Power down.”

“ _Command confirmed. Powering down._ ” The armour stepped back, locked its legs, and returned to rigid lifelessness.

“Jealous?” Fareeha asked, cocking her head up at Angela.

“I want one,” Angela sighed. “It really just… looks after itself?”

“Until Helix International realises I’ve gone AWOL with it,” Fareeha sighed. “Then it might need a bit of work to keep going.”

“Well at least my Valkyrie isn’t subject to the whims of a board of directors,” Angela teased.

“If you _really_ want to compare suits, I’ll just remind you that yours technically doesn’t fly.”

“Yes it does!”

“No, it doesn’t. It glides, that’s not the same thing. _I’ll_ never fall out of the sky because there aren’t any thermals around.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Angela grinned.

“You probably should be.”

“No, because I know you’ll catch me.”

Fareeha considered that. “You may be right,” she said, and pressed a quick kiss to Angela’s hand resting on her shoulder.

“So what’s the mission you’ve got to get ready for?” Angela asked, trying not to lose track of things as Fareeha took her free hand in both of hers and kissed it again. Eventually she gave up, dumped her laptop on the floor and sat back.

“London,” Fareeha said as she clambered up to sit on the upturned crate next to Angela, wrapping her arms around Angela’s waist and resting her chin on the other woman’s shoulder. A stray strand of Angela’s hair tickled her nose and she blew it out of the way. “Got to go and help Tracer get back.”

A shadow crossed Angela’s face. “And Am- uh, and Widowmaker too?”

Fareeha scowled. “If I _must_.”

“Look, Fareeha…”

“Don’t say that, you sound like my mother. Who I only recently found out was still _alive_ , who lost her eye and went into hiding, and all because of the _murderer_ I have been tasked with rescuing.” She exhaled slowly, calmly, dangerously. It made Angela shiver a bit, despite the residual heat from the day outside and Fareeha’s body pressed against hers. “It leaves a bad taste in my mouth,” Fareeha said.

“It’s for the best,” Angela said quietly.

“Perhaps.”

“She only did all that because she… felt she had to.”

“I don’t doubt it. But I’d be a poor daughter if no part of me wanted revenge for my mother.”

There was a truth in that, Angela thought. Her whole medical career had been in the name of her own lost family.

“Look, Fareeha,” she said, her voice trembling a little bit. She tried to get up, pace around like she always did when she was nervous, but strong arms held her down. “When Widowmaker gets back – assuming you don’t drop her in the sea on the way here – we’re going to try and reverse Talon’s conditioning. And when we do that, if it works…” she paused, searching for how to put what she had to say next.

“What?” Fareeha asked.

“Things are going to come to light,” Angela said at last, looking miserable. “Things that I’d tried so hard, too hard, to keep buried. And when people find out… when _you_ find out… all the things I’ve done... _Gott hilf mir_ ,” she whimpered.

She might have said more but before she knew it Fareeha had swung herself around so she was sat on Angela’s lap, straddling her and hugging her shoulders. Warm lips met her own and she melted gratefully into the kiss.

“If all this is about your fling with Amélie Lacroix…” Fareeha said after they came up for air at last.

Angela’s heart all but stopped. “Wha…?” she squeaked.

Fareeha gave her a knowing smile. “McCree and Genji gave me the lowdown, as I think Jesse calls it, on all the old members of Overwatch when I arrived. All the things that didn’t make it into the holo-vids. Rumours, embarrassing stories, that sort of thing.”

“Genji!” Angela spluttered. “I could understand Jesse doing something like that, but _Genji_? How’s that for gratitude!? After I rebuilt his body from nothing! Oh, he’d better watch his back now! I’ll… I’ll…”

“Sure you will,” Fareeha giggled, and kissed her again.

“So,” Angela said awkwardly after a moment, “you know about me? And Amélie?”

Fareeha’s expression hardened a notch or two. “I cannot say I approve of it. But I’m willing to let it remain in the past where it belongs.”

“Thank you,” Angela said, and had perhaps never looked so grateful. “I just… hope the others will be as forgiving.”

“I think most of them already know. And I think they’ve forgiven you, in their own ways.”

“Marvellous. You’ve only been here for a few months but you already know my old colleagues better than I did.” There was no malice or sarcasm in Angela’s voice, just a tinge of regret.

“Maybe if you left your lab more often than never…”

“Then I wouldn’t be nearly as effective a healer.”

“Perhaps.”

Fareeha tended to say that, Angela had noticed, when she didn’t want to openly disagree.

“Anyway,” Fareeha said, suddenly businesslike. “I think we’re getting distracted from the real issue here.”

“And that is…?” Angela asked, slightly nervously. Fareeha grinned wolfishly at her.

“Whether you’re going to take your shirt off, or if I’m going to have to take it off for you.”

It took Angela a second to parse the sudden gear-change, and when she did she bit her lip and looked around. “What, here? Now?” she whispered.

She looked like some awkward teenager who couldn’t quite believe their luck whenever Fareeha suggested they make love. Fareeha thought it was rather adorable.

“And why not?” she smirked, reaching for the buttons on Angela’s shirt and getting to work. “I’m an impatient woman, Dr Ziegler.”

“ _Wunderbar_ ” Angela said drily as Fareeha pressed a kiss to her throat. “The one affliction I cannot cure.”

“But you can treat it, can’t you?” Fareeha grinned, popping the last button off Angela’s shirt, running her hands gently over her skin, leaning in for another kiss.

“A good doctor always does her best, my love,” Angela whispered, and kissed her back.

 

* * *

 

Late night in Gibraltar meant early dawn in London. Far away on the other edge of Europe, Soldier 76 sat and drummed his fingers on a desk as his mind whirled. Winston double-checked timetables and flightplans. Angela and Fareeha lay naked and pressed together in a sweaty tangle of arms and bedsheets, savouring every moment they had together while waiting for orders to come through.

Somewhere in London, Tracer and Widowmaker were recovering from their wounds, planning their escape.

And somewhere else in the same city, a man in hooded armour and a skull-shaped mask stood and looked out of a window over the shimmering dance of light. Adverts crawling up skyscrapers, cars winding along roads, dirigibles and jets in the sky. He looked out at it and saw none of it, his mind on other things.

From behind him, a voice: “This cannot carry on.”

He glanced in the reflection the window carried. A woman in a suit. He was in her office, at her invitation, but they both knew where the real power lay.

“ _The hunt will last as long as necessary, Minister_ ,” he said.

“The papers are already crawling down my throat about these raids your men are conducting! I cannot keep the truth concealed for much longer!”

“ _I’m sure you’ll cope._ ”

“Not with the Vice Chancellor’s head blown off I won’t. You do realise that with him gone, our support in the government has collapsed, right? There’s already talk of cutting off our revenue streams. Billions of pounds a year, and now Talon won’t see a penny of it!”

“ _And this concerns me, how?_ ”

“Because none of this would have happened if you’d done your bloody job!”

That was a mistake. Reaper whirled around, billowed towards the woman, materialised less than an inch from her face.

“ _My job is the elimination of people who stand in our way. Not bodyguarding. Your job is to keep the British in our pocket. Not complaining. I recommend we both do our jobs._ ” His voice was an inhuman rasp.

“Ah… I didn’t mean… that is …”

“ _We will be raiding more safehouses tomorrow. Keep the press off our backs._ ”

“…whatever you say.”

“ _Good._ ”

He made to leave.

“Maybe we should call it a day. Offer them free passage out of the country if they’ll leave us be?”

“ _I know those women. It’s not over until we’re dead, or they are._ ”

Reaper paused, considered, made a hacking noise that might have been a laugh.

“ _Which is how it should be._ ”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this chapter took a lot longer to write than I'd hoped and I'm still not sure about it, but hopefully it holds up! Thanks again to everyone who's left kudos and/or comments, they really do make my day.

It was still early morning in London and the sun had yet to rise over Gibraltar. In a few hours Winston and Soldier 76 would almost come to blows, Fareeha and Angela would discuss the past in a dimly-lit room, Reaper would take a government minister to task for their perceived failures. But for now, all that was for the future.

Once they had finished patching each other up, Tracer took her phone and went to call Winston. Widowmaker could hear her voice filtering through the door to the bedroom as she pottered around, carefully taking note of potential entry points and stashing weapons in easy-to-reach places.

“Winston, love! How’s it going?... Nah, not much… Bad case of chronal dissociation and a Talon hitsquad, just another day at the office…”

Widowmaker rolled her eyes as she tucked her rifle next to the mattress in the bedroom, where she could grab it in a second if anyone burst through the door. It was reassuring, she thought, to hear that she wasn’t the only one Tracer seemed to like taking to the end of their tether. She listened as Tracer rattled off a brief account of what had happened to them in the Underworld.

“Nothin’ to worry about, big fella!” Tracer finished. “Widowmaker got me back to the safehouse right as rain…”

And it was refreshing, she noted idly as she hid a kitchen knife down the side of the toilet – she’d killed a lot of people who’d been answering nature’s call over the years, something about it made people drop their guard, and she was determined not to join their ranks – it was refreshing to hear someone call her ‘Widowmaker’ without having to stop themselves from saying ‘Amélie’ first.

“What?... Yeah, nah, I’m fine… Well, got a cracking headache and a lot of unwanted memories but what’s new? Dealin’ with it like normal…”

So a bottle of vodka was standard operating procedure when this happened, then? Widowmaker rolled her eyes. Somehow she wasn’t surprised. She hung one of Tracer’s pistols on a coat hook behind the door, in case Talon was polite enough to knock.

“So, got any ideas… Oh? Okay… Well, I’m sure you’ll think of something, love! You and 76 put your heads together and you can solve just about anything, right?”

A venom mine on the balcony outside, in case anyone tried to abseil down from the high-rise’s upper floors. Widowmaker took a moment to make sure it knew not to explode in her or Tracer’s face.

“It’s just… I don’t think we’ve got much time left, big guy…”

 _Two days, maybe three_ , Widowmaker thought. That was what the Tracer from the future had said. She shook her head at the thought. _The Tracer from the future_. It sounded ridiculous, like the title of some appalling 1950s B-movie.

“Yeah, yeah, I know…”

Another venom mine on the kitchen worktop, deactivated, ready to throw at anyone who came in through the door. Tracer’s other pistol in the cutlery drawer, a hand’s breadth away.

“Okay then, love. Hey, chin up! I’m sure we’ll be fine!... Yeah, yeah, I know, don’t worry… Okay, bye now… bye…”

Tracer came back through from the bedroom, opened her mouth to start talking, then blinked in surprise and looked around slowly.

“Okay…” she said, squinting suspiciously, “this is like those ‘spot the ten deliberate mistakes’ puzzles we used to get on the back of cereal boxes. _How_ much did I have to drink?” she asked, looking down at the bottle she was still holding by the neck.

“What is wrong?”

“Don’t say that, love, you’ll make me think this is normal.” She started walking slowly around the flat. “Why is my gun on the coat hook?”

“A precaution.”

“Right…”

“In case Talon kicks in our door while you’re in a drunken stupor,” Widowmaker explained, not bothering to keep the disdain out of her voice, “we shall not be completely defenceless.”

Tracer sighed. “Love, I know how this looks…” she said, lifting the bottle for emphasis.

“Sloppy and unprofessional?”

“Yup,” Tracer said with a wan smile. “But trust me, you’d be doing the same.”

“Would I?”

“Well, unless you _enjoy_ not being able to quite work out who you are.”

Widowmaker frowned.

“It’s…” Tracer fumbled for the word, “…aftershocks? I think that’s what Winston calls ‘em. My accelerator’s working again but my brain needs some time to catch up. I keep getting little blips where I think I’m some other me for a moment.”

Widowmaker briefly tried to imagine being Amélie Lacroix again, wondered how that woman would react to suddenly waking up in this body with its icy skin and languid heartbeat.

She probably wouldn’t take it well.

“They sort themselves out after about a week,” Tracer continued. “Or, I could just blitz ‘em with some heavy boozing and be right as rain by the evening.” She laughed and glanced out at the sunrise. “We’ve kinda turned nocturnal, haven’t we, love? Start of a beautiful day and I’m getting ready for bed.”

She stumbled off to use the bathroom, the alcohol making her a little unsteady on her feet. After a moment Widowmaker heard her call nervously through the door.

“Ah, love… why is there a _knife_ in here?”

“ _Precautions_ ,” she snapped back irritably.

“Gotta stay safe in case those famous Talon frogmen swim up through the bog, eh?”

She didn’t dignify that with an answer.

By the time Tracer was done Widowmaker had stretched out on the mattress and was slowly starting to drift off. Another of Talon’s little gifts: she could fall asleep almost whenever she wanted, and wake in an instant if need be.

“We sharin’, then?” Tracer asked, leaning against the doorframe in a manner what was probably meant to look more casual than it did. Widowmaker tilted her head and looked over at her.

“I am not sleeping on that sofa for a second night,” she said. “I am convinced it has been filled with rocks.” She winced at the memory of the crick it had left in her neck. “You are welcome to it if you like, but otherwise, _oui_ , _chérie_ , we are sharing.”

Tracer raised her eyebrow and didn’t quite hide a blush. “C _hérie_ , eh, love? Think I know enough French to know what _that_ means,” she grinned.

“Now perhaps you have some idea of what it’s like being on the receiving end, _non_?”

“Having a beautiful woman call you ‘love’? I can see why you liked it so much,” Tracer drawled.

“ _Dieu_ , the ego on this one,” Widowmaker said, and smirked.

Tracer took one last swig from her vodka bottle, put it down carefully on the floor, and flopped down on the mattress next to Widowmaker. Not entirely to Widowmaker’s surprise, she curled up against her, knees pressed into the backs of her thighs and forehead against her neck, the size difference between them not quite working in Tracer’s favour.

“Christ, love, you’re _freezing_ ,” Tracer mumbled.

“Or you are burning.”

“Well, yeah, I know I’m hot.” Just from the way Tracer said it, Widowmaker knew she was grinning that grin of hers.

“Go to sleep,” she murmured, too worn out to say much more.

There was silence in the flat for a moment or two.

“Hey, love…”

A tired sigh. “Yes?”

“This isn’t… this isn’t too much, is it?”

“Hmm?”

“Y’know. I am kinda spooning you here…”

“Asking for my opinion? You _must_ be drunk.”

“Oi!”

Widowmaker allowed herself a quiet chuckle.

In truth, she wasn’t sure. Widowmaker the feared Talon assassin would have kicked Tracer off the mattress in an instant. But then that Widowmaker would never have betrayed Talon in the first place, would never have followed Tracer into the Underworld on some faint promise of a square meal, and would have abandoned Tracer to Reaper’s clutches the moment her accelerator malfunctioned and she became a burden.

But that Widowmaker seemed to be fading and she wasn’t sure what kind of person was emerging to take its place. So instead of saying anything in reply she just shuffled back, pressing into Tracer a bit more. If nothing else, it would be nice to fall asleep knowing someone had her back.

“Guess there’s my answer then,” Tracer mumbled happily.

Widowmaker closed her eyes, letting Tracer’s warmth slowly seep through her as she drifted off.

“If I’m not up by tonight, come wake me, yeah? Winston should have something figured out by then.”

_Mon Dieu, does she never shut up?_

“ _D’accord_.”

A pause.

“Oh yeah, and was that one of your poison bombs I spotted out on the balcony earlier?”

“ _Oui_.”

“You planning on gassing a pigeon?” Tracer chuckled.

“Tracer, _go to sleep_.”

 

* * *

 

Widowmaker had only intended to sleep for a few hours but it was dusk by the time she finally woke. The events of the last twenty-four hours must have exhausted her more than she’d thought. Her eyes opened slowly and she took a moment to remember where she was. Dim orange light filtered into the bedroom from the flat’s main room, the setting sun lending everything a rich amber colour.

She blinked a couple of times and stretched, getting the stiffness out of her limbs, and then tried to get up. She couldn’t. Something heavy was attached to her midriff and held her fast to the mattress.

_Of course._

She looked down but a part of her already knew what she was going to see. Tracer, still fast asleep and snoring softly, had wrapped her arms around Widowmaker’s waist sometime during the night. Her forehead was pressed gently against the back of Widowmaker’s neck and she could feel her breath where it tickled the tops of her shoulders, warm on her cold skin.

“Tracer,” Widowmaker whispered, turning her head as much as she could to try and face the other woman. Tracer looked a little bit odd without her goggles on and her hair was even messier than normal, but in a strange way she looked almost peaceful. The sunset’s warm light lit her from one side, highlighted the freckles on her cheeks, glinted off her earrings.

Still, she was no Renaissance artwork. Her eyes were bruised and her nose still a little bloody from their fight in the Underworld, and her milky skin was peppered with plasters and bandages. A tiny sliver of drool was seeping out of the corner of her mouth and it twitched as she snored.

The old Widowmaker would not have spent several seconds admiring their bedmate, Widowmaker suddenly realised. She scowled and tried to put her thoughts to one side.

“ _Tracer_ ,” she hissed again, and tugged at the strong arms around her. “Let go!”

Tracer mumbled something unintelligible and didn’t move.

“Tracer?”

Still nothing. Widowmaker sighed, reached down, and started slowly untangling herself from Tracer’s arms. After a few moments she had enough room to roll out of Tracer’s grasp, off the mattress and onto the wooden floorboards with a quiet _thud_. Still sleeping, Tracer frowned at the broken contact and squirmed as if trying to get her back.

She mumbled something again and this time Widowmaker was awake enough to pick out a word or two.

“… Hello?... Anyone?”

Widowmaker clambered to her feet and looked down at her. Not for the first time she thought how strange it was that not long ago, if presented with the same opportunity, she’d have killed Tracer in an instant. And Tracer would have done the same to her, perhaps, in the heat of the moment.

Tracer shuddered in her sleep. “Slipstream… come in… lost…”

A bad dream, was Widowmaker’s guess. Reliving the Slipstream incident, and probably not for the first time. She had seen Talon’s files on Tracer and the accident that had made her who she was. They had been a combination of stolen data and best-guesses but even so they’d painted a disturbing picture of what she must have experienced.

“…cold…”

Widowmaker squatted down next to Tracer and rested a hand on her forehead, as if to check her temperature. Tracer’s skin felt scorching hot, as if she had a terrible fever, but to Widowmaker everyone felt uncomfortably warm.  She was used to it by now.

“ _Tu n'es pas seul, chérie_ ,” she whispered. _You’re not alone_.

Perhaps it was her imagination, but Tracer seemed to relax a little as she said it. Her breathing became more regular and her muscles relaxed.

Widowmaker stood back up, folding her arms and feeling faintly embarrassed. Whispered promises and gentle touches? A part of her that even now still missed Talon scolded and mocked her. _Sentimentality_ , it sneered, _gets people killed_.

Usually by people like her.

She turned on her heel and went to splash some cold water on her face in the bathroom. She’d have preferred to take a shower, but was unwilling to do so when Talon might come knocking at any moment. And besides, the _thing_ that claimed to be the flat’s shower was dirty and dilapidated and Widowmaker was in no great hurry to try it out.

The pipes made an alarming gurgling noise as she turned the tap on, but the water that spat out was refreshingly cool. Her reflection studied her from the mirror above the washbasin with a knowing look as she dried her face. _We both know what is happening here_ , it seemed to say.

Widowmaker tapped her fingers on the chipped porcelain in thought.

 _J'ai besoin d'une cigarette_ , she decided.

 

* * *

  

Twenty minutes later she stood on the tiny balcony the safehouse had, leaning on the railing and looking out over the London skyline and the setting sun behind it. A cigarette between her lips glowed red.

She had bought a pack of them from a vending machine in the lobby of the high-rise the safehouse was in, raiding Tracer’s wallet for some money to buy them with. The vending machine had also sold beer, condoms and chocolate bars, which had given Widowmaker no end of insight into what kind of people she was sharing the building with. That old woman who worked at the reception desk and who looked about a hundred years old had watched her every step of the way from the lift doors to the vending machine and back again.

The woman was probably just nosy. But Widowmaker had been very tempted to kill her just to be on the safe side – all it would take was one phone call to the authorities and the two day’s grace period they had would drop to mere minutes. The old bat would probably never know how close she’d been to getting a knife in her neck.

Widowmaker inhaled, held it for a second, and slowly let out a stream of blue smoke that tasted of plastic. The vending machine had only stocked modern disposable cigarettes – self-lighting, single-use vapour tubes. They were as bland as they were cheap and Widowmaker privately detested them, but they did the job. A pleasant buzz started up in her head as the nicotine did its work.

Talon had changed so much when they had forged her from Amélie Lacroix, but there had been one little thing they’d never been able to successfully suppress. Lacroix, as was fashionable amongst French nobility, had smoked. So did Widowmaker. And she’d retained Lacroix’s tastes too, for hand-rolled cigarettes with genuine tobacco in them. To be able to smoke real cigarettes was a statement of wealth in France – saying that you could not only afford the real deal, but you could also afford the price of the treatment when all the nasty side effects inevitably reared their heads.

At least the disposable ones were less unhealthy, she thought, even if they were tasteless. She blew a perfect smoke ring and for an instant it framed London’s centre, encircling the skyscrapers and drawing a line between them and the towering domicile complexes further out, where London kept its slums.

She let her mind wander as the smoke ring diffused out into nothingness.

Talon’s conditioning had never been a permanent solution, even when it had been fresh. Every couple of months she would begin to feel the effects of it slipping – strange thoughts that did not feel like hers, a drop in accuracy, even a few missed shots and botched jobs. And either she would report this to her handlers or, if that part of her conditioning had failed too, they would eventually notice and bring her in themselves.

From there it was a simple matter of re-application. They would take her to one of Talon’s medical facilities, give her something to make her sleep, and when she woke up again the old Widowmaker would be back and the cycle would begin anew. What they did to her while she was under, she had always been content not to ask.

But it had been at least a month since Overwatch captured her and nearly three since her last reconditioning. Once again her conditioning was breaking down, and this time Talon was not there to rebuild it.

She was entering uncharted territory, and it frightened her.

How far would it go? Would it collapse completely? Would Amélie Lacroix re-emerge? And if she did, what would happen to Widowmaker?

The thought of dying had never scared her before, because she’d always assumed it would be quick. A sniper’s bullet, a soldier’s grenade, an assassin’s knife. That sort of thing. But if Lacroix resurfaced, slowly took back control of this body… would she feel herself slipping away? Would she… _become_ Lacroix? Would she end up what Lacroix was now – memories to draw upon, and nothing more?

Widowmaker shivered and it had nothing to do with the evening’s chill.

And then there was the issue of Dr Ziegler.

To Overwatch, Widowmaker was more valuable than Lacroix. Soldier 76 (who was fooling no-one, even Widowmaker had seen past that mask when she had been briefly interrogated by him), McCree, the Shimada brothers – she was confident they recognised the need for her skills and her knowledge of Talon’s operations. But Ziegler had both compassion and naïveté. And together those were a dangerous mix.

She also had a much more personal reason to see Amélie Lacroix returned. Widowmaker wondered if Ziegler had moved on from those days, found herself someone else. Wondered if what she’d said on the phone just a day ago – “ _We’ll get you back, Amélie. I promise_ ,” – was her pining for a lost friend, or a lost lover.

Would they listen to her when she told them that to resurrect Lacroix would be to murder Widowmaker? Would they hand her over to Ziegler, let her tear apart Talon’s work? Would she succeed? Would they care?

Those questions and a thousand others swirled in her mind like a flock of bats. She took another drag and let out another cloud of pale smoke. It coiled around her head in the still evening air.

Behind her, she heard heavy footsteps and muffled noises from inside the flat.

“Tracer? Is that you?” she called through.

“Nah, it’s Reaper.” And then, in a preposterously deep voice: “ _I’m here for your soul._ ”

“Very funny.”

“ _Death comes._ ”

Widowmaker sniggered. It wasn’t a bad impression.

“And you had to work with the guy,” Tracer said as she tramped through to the kitchen. From the bleary croak of her voice, Widowmaker guessed she was fighting off a bad hangover. “Is he always like that?”

Widowmaker thought for a second as she watched her cigarette burn down. “More or less.”

“Christ, I thought it was just an act.”

“Sadly, _non_.”

Tracer began rooting through cupboards in the kitchen.

“Hungover?” Widowmaker asked.

“Very,” Tracer groaned.

Widowmaker peered inside. Tracer looked like she was pulling out things at random and lining them up on the counter. “What are you doing?”

“Curing it.”

“You can’t cure a hangover.”

“Watch me.”

Tracer poured a mix of ingredients that Widowmaker couldn’t quite see into a mug, boiled the kettle and added some hot water, stirred it all for a bit, and then ambled out to join her on the balcony.

A strange acrid smell was coming from the mug. “What is that?” Widowmaker asked, slightly wary.

“The Lena Oxton hangover cure. Accept no imitations.” Tracer’s eyes were puffy and still half closed. She took a sip and Widowmaker actually saw her pupils dilate.

“Do I want to know?”

Tracer reeled off the list like she’d long ago committed it to memory. “Take one hot coffee, add hair of the dog vodka, more instant coffee, a few dashes of Tabasco pepper sauce and a _lot_ of cocoa.”

Widowmaker’s expression settled somewhere between disgust and horror.

“Technically, it’s banned under the Geneva Convention,” Tracer joked, and took another sip. “But it works.” She nodded at the cigarette that was still in Widowmaker’s hand, even though it had long since burned out. “Didn’t have you pegged as a smoker, love. I’ll have one if you’re offering, though.”

Widowmaker offered her the pack and took another for herself. “I did not think you were the type either.”

Tracer grinned. “On-and-off, y’know. Been tryin’ to quit since I was fourteen, never _quite_ managed it.”

Widowmaker raised an eyebrow at ‘fourteen’. Tracer noticed.

“Pretty standard where I grew up,” she said as if that explained everything.

“And where exactly was that?” Widowmaker asked, clicking the end of her own cigarette to light it.

Tracer lit hers too and took a drag. She cast a glance over the London skyline as she exhaled.

“Right… about… _there_ ,” she said, pointing at one of the domicile complexes that squatted halfway between their high-rise and the city centre like a concrete ziggurat. “Or maybe that one,” she added, indicating another identical building just next to it. “Kinda hard to tell from this angle.”

Widowmaker’s goggles slid over her eyes and she zoomed in on the buildings. All she saw was mouldy concrete and rusty fire escapes, weak yellow light filtering through a few grimy windows. “It looks…”

“Shit?” Tracer finished for her with a half-hearted laugh. “Don’t have to tell me, love.”

Widowmaker made a non-committal gesture and deactivated her goggles.

Tracer leaned on the balcony, mug in one hand and her cigarette dangling between her lips, and sighed.

“They built those bloody things back before the Crisis,” she said, pointing out a couple more of the domicile complexes. “Said they were the future of London: shops, houses, parks, all under one big roof. Started moving people out of the slums and putting them up in there. ‘Course, this was way before I was even born. My folks were one of the lucky few to get a place in one.”

The way she said it spoke volumes about how ‘lucky’ she felt her parents had been.

“My dad was on the dole back then. Broke his leg in a demonstration at the factory he worked at, after they fired all the humans there and brought in omnics. The coppers said there was a crush and he fell but that’s rubbish. Police kicked the tar out of him and about a hundred other strikers. So he couldn’t do much anymore and it was just mum supporting us. And, y’know, they might’ve made it work if the Omnic Crisis hadn’t happened.”

She took a drag on her cigarette, the end glowing like a coal in the fading light.

“The government needed somewhere to put all the refugees from places the omnics had taken and the tenements were only half-full. It made sense, I guess. But all of a sudden the place was full of people who didn’t have two pennies to rub together, and no-one in those places was livin’ like a king to start with. Add in food shortages from the war, rationing, blackouts, the water getting cut off… it got bad.”

Widowmaker said nothing, just watched Tracer stare out over London with an intense stare, like she was looking back into the past.

“I came along a few years into the war, youngest of three. I don’t remember much of my early years, and maybe that’s not a bad thing. But even after the peace, those places never got back on their feet. And, well, for a lass growing up around those parts, there weren’t a lot of options.”

She shrugged. “I ended up thieving because I didn’t fancy going on the dole or becoming some gang boss’ bit on the side. Got pretty good at it, too. Cars, mostly, once my legs were long enough to reach the pedals. Me and a couple of mates would nick old autos and flog ‘em to scrap dealers around town. That’s how I met Mac, that bloke we dumped our VTOL on. He set us up with some pretty good deals over the years.”

Her eyes refocussed and she shrugged. “Huh. The Lena Oxton life story as well as her hangover cure,” she said, raising her mug and taking another sip. “Ignore me, love, or I’ll end up talking your ears off.”

“No, go on,” Widowmaker said, slightly awkwardly. She wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to say, but some long-suppressed part of her told her she ought to say _something_. “What happened then?”

“Got busted,” Tracer said simply. “Just two weeks shy of my sixteenth birthday. The coppers showed up halfway through me hotwiring a car and nabbed us all. Went up before a judge and he offered me a choice: five years in prison, or the air cadets. So I signed up for the RAF on the spot and spent the next two years learning to fly. Gave me the chance to rethink my life and I tried turning things around.”

She chuckled. “And look where it got me,” she said. “Unstuck from time and on the run from terrorists.”

“ _C’est la vie_ ,” Widowmaker said.

“Hey, I’ve got a beautiful woman to share the experience with, I ‘aint complaining,” Tracer said with a grin Widowmaker was pretty sure met the qualifications for ‘shit-eating’.

“Don’t push your luck,” she replied with an ill-concealed smirk. “There is still time for you to fall from this balcony.”

“Sorry, love, but it guess it’s a bit too late for me to start being on my best behaviour,” Tracer shot back. She turned round, leaned with her back against the balcony railing. “Suppose I’d better call Winston after I finish this,” she said, holding up her cigarette. “See if they’ve had any bright ideas yet.”

Something on Widowmaker’s face must have given her away. Tracer frowned at her.

“What was _that_ for?” she asked.

“What?”

“The moment I mentioned Winston you looked like someone’d walked over your grave.”

Widowmaker looked away and there was silence between them for a second.

“Go on, love,” Tracer said eventually. “Penny for your thoughts, and all that.”

Widowmaker exhaled sharply thought gritted teeth, as if confessing this sort of thing was unpleasant for her. In a way, it was.

“You’re talking about taking me back to an organisation that mostly despises me,” she said. “An organisation that has threatened to _kill_ me. Forgive me for not being too enamoured with the concept.”

Tracer’s expression veered between disbelief and anger. “ _Kill you_?” she squeaked. “What… who…”

“Your Dr Ziegler-”

“ _Angie_!? Threatened to _kill_ you? Are you having me on?”

“Not at all. Yesterday, while you were asleep, she rang your phone. I answered it. During our conversation she expressed an… _intent_ to reverse Talon’s work on me.”

“That seems like a long way from _killing_ you, love!”

“Her exact words were, ‘we’ll get you back, Amélie,’ I believe.”

Tracer looked like she understood none of this.

“Put it another way, then. Ziegler brings back Lacroix, _oui_? Talon’s efforts are undone and Amélie uses this body once more. So where will Widowmaker have gone?”

Tracer frowned, went to say something, then stopped.

“But… aren’t you…?”

“ _Non_. I am Widowmaker. Not Lacroix. I have her memories but _I am not her_. To bring Lacroix back would be to end me.”

Her expression became morose. “From a distance this must sound ridiculous, _non_? How many lives I have taken, and here I stand begging for my own.”

She looked away from Tracer, out across the city.

“You wanna know something funny?” Tracer asked.

Widowmaker didn’t reply.

“I hated Amélie Lacroix.”

A moment’s pause. “What?”

“Yup. Met her a couple of times. Don’t suppose you remember?”

Widowmaker pondered that for a while. “Very little,” she said at last.

Tracer scoffed. “Sounds about right. God, that woman, she thought the sun shone out of her arse! I met her, what, once or twice? At official dinners and balls and that kind of thing. She wouldn’t have been seen dead in my presence otherwise. I mean, her family owned a _castle_ , for crying out loud! She was French nobility, I’m a girl from the slums of London, and bloody hell did she ever let me know it. Used to look at me like I was some charity case Overwatch had taken on out of pity.”

Widowmaker was surprised at the venom in the other woman’s voice.

“Never mind that I was a decorated pilot and one of our top field agents, and all she ever did was sign some cheques and woo some bureaucrats to get Gérard’s unit better funding than the rest of us. So you can bloody keep Amélie Lacroix if you ask me,” she huffed. “Not saying she deserved what happened to her,” she added quickly, “and I suppose you aren’t exactly a saint either.”

Tracer took one last drag on her cigarette and tossed it over the balcony behind her. She stood upright and walked over to Widowmaker, looked her dead in the eyes. “Sod it,” she said decisively. “You know what? It was Widowmaker who stuck with me down there in the Underworld when my accelerator was on the fritz. Not Lacroix.”

Widowmaker didn’t say anything, once again didn’t know what to say.

Tracer’s hands gripped her shoulders, hot against her cool skin. “We’re getting back to Gibraltar, love, one way or another.”

There was a flash of blue as Tracer blinked up, planted a quick kiss on Widowmaker’s lips, and dropped back down with a goofy smile tugging at her mouth. Widowmaker’s cheeks flushed red-hot and her heartbeat trembled, just for a moment.

“And I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, love,” she added. “I think I owe you that much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting next chapter I'm going to try and wrap this fic up. The end is in sight!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus the 'explosive finale' begins...

_The next morning  
_

Talon arrived just before dawn.

A five-man squad rode the lift up, cleared the corridor leading to the last Overwatch safehouse in London, lined up outside the door with weapons drawn. Standard breach-and-clear tactics, like they’d done a hundred times before with Talon and a thousand times before with Blackwatch.

Behind them stood Reaper, shotguns at the ready, trigger fingers itching. An earpiece under his hood crackled.

“ _Snipers?_ ”

“Standing by, sir,” came the response.

“ _Roof team?_ ”

“Ready, sir.”

“ _Excellent_.” He hissed in anticipation. “ _All teams, go_.”

“Copy that, sir,” said the merc closest to the flat’s front door. She reached into a pocket on her belt and produced a small breaching charge about the size of a large coin. An adhesive pad on its back attached it to the door lock and she pressed a button on the top of it.

“Breaching in three,” she whispered, “two, one…”

There was a dull _thump_ and a blinding white glare. The lock blew out of the door in a shower of melted metal and charred splinters.

“ _Go, go, go!_ ” the lead merc yelled.

“Roof teams, abseiling,” came the crackle in Reaper’s ear.

“Snipers on watch, still no sign of targets.”

The squad outside the door charged in, their boots hammering on the apartment’s wooden floor. From the other side of the safehouse came the sound of shattering glass as the squad on the roof abseiled down and crashed through the windows. There was a muffled bang and suddenly Reaper’s earpiece was filled with chokes and coughs.

“Gas mine! All units, seal your helmets!”

 _Nicely played, Widowmaker_ , he thought. He billowed in after the soldiers in a cloud of dark smoke.

The balcony was lost in a haze of green gas and he could see the blurred outlines of fallen bodies through it. The rest of his soldiers went room-by-room, clearing the place by the book.

“Main room, clear!”

“Bathroom, clear!”

“Kitchen, clear!”

“Bedroom, clear!”

It took a moment for the truth to sink in. When it did the lead merc approached him gingerly.

“They’re not here, sir.”

“ _Evidently_ ,” Reaper growled.

“Your orders, sir?” she asked, trying not to let her voice waver, knowing full well that more than her job might be on the line if Reaper was displeased.

“ _Search this place. There’s nowhere else for them to go, they_ must _have used it._ ”

“Yes sir,” she acknowledged, barely bothering to hide her relief that for now she wasn’t in the firing line.

She marched back to her squad and started barking out orders. Within moments the Talon soldiers were tearing the safehouse apart.

Reaper paced back and forth as they worked, hoping they would find _something_ of use. He did not relish the thought of communicating yet another failure to Talon’s high command. Not because he feared any retribution – who would they send against him? He was the best they had – but because he had no patience for the squabbling and backstabbing that would inevitably follow. That was the one problem with his bosses in Talon. Like everyone who aspired to rule the world, they were at heart petty and childish.

Whereas he had no desire to rule anything. Let those trivial ambitions die with Reyes, he thought. Much more satisfying to drag the world down to his level than to build it up to someone else’s.

Across the room from him, the squad commander put a finger to her earpiece as some radio traffic came through.

“Solid copy… what? Are you sure?” she said. “Very well, I’ll notify him immediately.”

Reaper turned to face her as she strode over.

“Sir? We’ve found them.”

“ _Where are they?_ ”

From the commander’s body language alone, Reaper suspected he wasn’t going to like the answer.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t tell me you’ve never been trainsurfing, love!”

“Don’t tell me you _have_ …”

“Sure I have! The old Overground lines used to run right through the bottom of the block I grew up in! If you played your cards right you could get from one side to the other and not pay a penny,” Tracer said, as she looked over the edge of the station roof at the tracks and the departing trains below. “’Course, you had to time your jumps right. Knew someone who mucked it up once and landed on the power cables instead. _Zap_!” She grinned at the memory. “Their hair was stuck on end for a week afterwards.”

Widowmaker eyed Tracer’s perpetually-windswept hairstyle. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

Tracer looked back at her and shrugged as if to say _maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t_.

Widowmaker checked the time on the clock spire that rose from the station roof. “Not long now, _oui_?”

“Winston said be on the half-past six train,” Tracer reminded her. “And he was very specific about _on_ , not _in_.”

“And you’re sure he didn’t say anything else?” Widowmaker asked irritably.

“Nope. Hey, if Talon’s listening in, it’s best not to say too much over the phone.”

Widowmaker had to admit she saw the logic there.

“So, what do you think he’s planning?” she asked.

Tracer had stuck her head over the edge of the roof again and dangled upside-down for a second. _Special agent Oxton_ , Widowmaker thought scathingly. _Like a child on the monkey bars_.

“Well, it’s the Eurostar we’re getting,” Tracer said, hauling herself upright. “They run every hour at half-past, down the Channel Tunnel and up into France. And by the looks of it, the one prepping to go is a cargo train. So at least we won’t have to worry about passengers getting in our way.”

Not long ago Widowmaker wouldn’t have cared less about collateral. Now she felt a twinge of relief. Her gut was telling her this escape had a good chance of getting messy.

“Dunno what’s going to happen once we’re on the train, though,” Tracer added as she walked back to where Widowmaker was stood. “My guess? He’ll send a bird to pick us up.”

The surreal image of Winston crammed into the cockpit of a VTOL flashed through Widowmaker’s head.

“And then we’re home free!” Tracer finished. “Been quite a ride, eh?”

Widowmaker nodded. “Home free,” she said, rolling the words around in her mouth. They almost didn’t seem real.

Tracer took a step forward, reached out and squeezed her arm gently. “Remember what I said, love. I know the others might take some time to warm up to you, but they _will_. And in the meantime, I’ll fight your corner if you need me to.”

Widowmaker smiled faintly in thanks.

Above them, the station clock chimed half-past the hour. From below them came the whining noise of a mag-lev train powering up its engines.

“Come on then, love! We’ve got a train to catch!”

Widowmaker did one last quick check – rifle strapped securely to her back, the last of her venom mines around her belt – and nodded.

 _Clunk-clank_ , the sound of magnetic clamps releasing. The whine shifted up a notch.

Together they turned and began sprinting for the edge of the roof. Tracer threw her arms out like she was pretending to be an aeroplane and Widowmaker shook her head in disbelief.

By the time they’d reached the edge the train was already leaving, sliding out of the station with an electronic rumble and off into the dawn. Tracer hit the edge first and blinked forward in a streak of blue. She reappeared in mid-air above the train with a gleeful cheer – “woo-hoo!” – and landed neatly atop a carriage. Widowmaker followed a second later, grappling onto the carriage roof next to her at breakneck speed as the train yanked her forward.

Tracer had to raise her voice over the rush of the wind and the sound of the engine. “Nicely done, love!” she hollered as Widowmaker clambered to her feet.

“What now?” Widowmaker asked.

“Now, we sit back, relax, and wait for Winston to…” she trailed off.

Widowmaker suddenly got déjà vu. Once again Tracer was spotting bad news over her shoulder.

“What? What is it?” she asked, whirling round to look in the same direction as Tracer.

“Aw, _crap_ ,” Tracer muttered.

Rising into the sky behind them, over the rooftops and the fast-disappearing station, was the red glow of Talon anti-gravs.

 

* * *

 

A thick morning fog had rolled across the English Channel and Soldier 76 was glad for it. The fewer people who saw what they were up to, the better.

He stood at the prow of the small fishing boat they’d co-opted in Gibraltar and peered out into the murk. A few dim shapes were barely visible in the early morning half-light. Passing superfreighters and ferries, he guessed, sailing out from Dover and Calais and off to all four corners of the globe. One of the world’s busiest waterways wouldn’t stop for a bit of fog.

Footsteps sounded on the deck behind him, heavy and mechanical.

“I remember when this was a simple mission to kill a Talon agent,” Pharah said as she came and stood next to him, the deck creaking under the weight of her Raptora armour. “Now look at it.”

“Pharah,” 76 said – they were on a mission now, it was callsigns and codenames until they got home – “you used to be in the army. Didn’t they tell you no plan survives contact with the enemy?”

Pharah rolled her eyes. “Sure. But I’m on a stolen boat, being sailed by a hyper-intelligent ape, about to rescue two people from a high-speed train. To say the plan has ‘not survived’ doesn’t really cut it, does it?”

Behind the two of them, in the trawler’s bridge, Winston poked his head out of a window and shouted across to them. “Alright, this is as close to the coast as we can go! Any further and the British coastguard’s going to start paying far too much attention to us.”

76 looked out into the fog. If he squinted he thought he might _just_ be able to see the coast, a line of dark grey fog in slightly lighter grey fog. “Sure this is the closest we can get?” he asked.

“Feel free to come up here and take over if you don’t like my sailing,” Winston replied with a smirk, gesturing to the boat’s control panels.

76 scowled. “Remind me again why we agreed to that you’re in charge of this thing?”

“Because neither Pharah nor you can read a nautical map,” Winston said. “And besides,” he added, “I _was_ technically born at sea. Only fitting that I’m captain of this ship.”

Pharah looked confused. “Weren’t you born on the moon?”

“Yep. In the Sea of Tranquillity.”

It took the other two a moment to get the joke, and then Winston was treated to a pair of impressive glares. He grinned.

“Moving on,” Pharah sighed. “I still think we should try for the other side of the Channel. Less fog and the French aren’t looking for us.”

76 shook his head emphatically. “The moment Talon realises they’re on that train, they’re going to put every last asset they have in northern France into intercepting them. But everything they have in southern Britain has already been sent to London to look for our agents. They’re spread thin on the British side, the odds are stacked in our favour there.”

“Yeah, well, don’t blame me if I mess up my landings because I couldn’t see where I was going,” Pharah grumbled, glaring around at the thick fog.

She flexed the shoulders of her Raptora suit and flared its rocket engines briefly.

“How long until we get this show on the road?” she asked.

“Not long now,” Winston said. “The train should have just left London.”

 

* * *

 

Widowmaker counted three Talon VTOLs bearing down on them before Tracer grabbed her arm and started running, down the spine of the train towards the break where one carriage joined another.

“We gotta get inside,” Tracer yelled. “We’re sitting ducks out here!”

The headwind from the train buffeted them as they sprinted forwards, blowing dirt and grit up into Widowmaker’s eyes and making her wish for a pair of goggles like Tracer’s. There was a deep mechanical snarl behind her and she stole a glance over her shoulder. The first VTOL was catching up with them fast.

They reached the coupling in the train just as it rumbled overhead, close enough for Widowmaker to smell the rich ozone stink of its anti-gravs and see the markings on its hull. Tracer dropped down into the gap and Widowmaker followed her, landing hard on the metal bearings that held the two carriages together. Tracer hammered at the door into the forward carriage but it wouldn’t budge.

“Locked!” she yelled over the _whoosh_ of the magnets below them and the roar of the wind. “Love, can you buy me some time to get this open?”

Widowmaker nodded and shimmied back up the side of the train car, wedging herself between them, back against one, feet braced against the other. She peered over the lip of the carriage in front of her, facing the front of the train. The VTOL had slowed to match the train’s speed. Doors were popping open in its flanks.

She twisted round to look behind her. Another VTOL, doing the same.

So where was the third?

She got her answer. From her right came a buzzing noise like a swarm of angry wasps and all of a sudden the metal of the train carriages around her was erupting with sparks. Widowmaker ducked back down, a bullet scything through the air where her head had been a half-second before. She glanced up and saw the third aircraft shoot overhead with a howl of engines, before pirouetting around and coming back for another strafing run.

That wasn’t a troop carrier like the other two, she realised. It was a ground-attack gunship.

 _Talon really wants us dead_ , she thought with a strange twinge of pride.

Below her Tracer called up. “You okay up there?”

Widowmaker glanced down at her. She had ripped some panels off the wall next to the door and was desperately fiddling around with the train’s electronics.

“Just get us inside!”

Tracer didn’t need any encouragement. More sparks flew around them as the gunship strafed again.

The second it had passed Widowmaker popped her head up again. Ahead and behind, the two VTOLs had dropped ropes and were busy disgorging Talon soldiers onto the train’s roof. A classic pincer movement, Widowmaker realised. And here they were in the middle of it.

She unslung her rifle from her back and squeezed off a couple of shots at the soldiers ahead of her but the strange swaying of the mag-lev train threw her aim off. The soldiers scrambled for cover behind power couplings and vents in the train’s roof and she lost sight of them.

A shadow loomed in her peripheral vision. The gunship was coming in again.

“How much longer?” she shouted down at Tracer.

“I’m workin’ on it!”

 _After all this, we die because we cannot get a door open_ , Widowmaker thought. She couldn’t decide whether that was tragic or strangely fitting.

The VTOL pulled alongside the train coupling where they were cowering, so close that Widowmaker could have seen the pilot if not for the tinted windows of the cockpit. Then its anti-gravs burned red-hot as the pilot threw it into a hard turn, up and over the train with its nose straight down. The autocannons buried in its front opened fire again and once again Widowmaker had to duck to avoid a hail of bullets.

The pilot of the VTOL didn’t even have to hit her, she realised dismally, just keep her pinned down for long enough so the other soldiers could reach her. She popped her head up again as it peeled away. The mercs ahead of them were getting much closer. Up came her rifle, steady, aim… fire. One of the mercs staggered and toppled off the train roof with a scream. The rest kept coming.

Behind her was a rattle of gunfire – a rifle, not an aircraft gun – and she had to drop down again. The mercs behind them were catching up.

A snarl of engines caught her attention. The gunship appeared in her view again, left side this time, drawing level with them, its pilot taking the time to get a good bead on them.

“Whenever you are ready, Tracer!” Widowmaker snapped.

“Don’t rush me, it’s not helping!” Tracer yelled back. “Jesus!” she shouted at no-one in particular. “Who puts this much security on a _train door_?”

Widowmaker could see the barrels on the gunship starting to spin up again. Sooner rather than later, their luck was going to run out.

She didn’t know the expression ‘going for broke’, but she did it now.

As the gunship started another manoeuvre, trying to get them in its sights, she aimed right back at it. Her goggles flipped down over her eyes, thermal scanners shone blood-red. Between waste heat from the guns and the VTOL’s stealth cladding she could barely make anything out, but if she looked carefully, she could _just_ see what she was hunting for.

A tiny heat blossom, just behind the nose of the craft, right where the cockpit was.

_Bonjour…_

The VTOL span up its guns. Widowmaker fired.

The tinted glass of the cockpit splintered into a million pieces.

_… et au revoir.  
_

Widowmaker had no idea if she’d killed the pilot, wounded them or just blinded them by breaking the glass. Either way, the result was exactly what she’d hoped for.

The gunship’s engines stuttered and howled. For a moment it wobbled and wavered in the sky above her like a drunkard and then it span away out of her sight. The sound of its engines continued for a few moments more before there was a deafening blast and a shockwave that punched her in the chest.

“What the hell was _that_?” Tracer yelled.

“Swatted a fly,” Widowmaker called back.

Tracer spared her a glance. “Don’t get cocky, love,” she smiled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. How’s the door going?”

“Any… moment… now…” Tracer said, wrist-deep in the circuitry around the door. Behind her Widowmaker heard the shouts of the Talon mercs, far too close for comfort.

At last, the door to the carriage opened with a hiss of hydraulics.

“ _Finally_!” Tracer crowed. She ducked inside and held out a hand to Widowmaker. “Come on!”

Widowmaker needed no encouraging. She dropped down from her perch between the carriages, aiming for the dark rectangle and Tracer’s outstretched hand. But as she fell, something tangled in her hair and yanked her painfully back up by her scalp.

She screeched in pain and kicked out wildly, trying to disentangle herself. It was no use. Whatever had her held fast, started dragging her towards the train roof. She looked up. Two Talon soldiers, one with his fists gripping her ponytail for all he was worth, leered back down at her.

Tracer yelled something she didn’t catch as they hauled her up and onto the train’s roof. Widowmaker swore and lashed out at them, catching one of them in the knee and making him topple over, but the other held her firm. The one she had dropped slipped around on the roof for a moment and nearly tumbled over the edge, but a third soldier managed to grab him before he went.

“Shoot her!” one of them yelled. There was a twinge of panic to his voice. They all knew what she was capable of.

Widowmaker snarled and reached desperately for her rifle but it wasn’t there. She must have dropped it when they dragged her up. One of the soldiers raised his rifle and Widowmaker glared furiously into his mask’s dead red eyes.

All of a sudden there was a streak of blue and a strange roar. Something came from nowhere, smashed into the soldier pointing the gun and tackled him off the train. His rifle clattered uselessly to the floor.

“What the…” one of the other mercs began.

Then he too disappeared with a roar, a flash of blue, and a high-pitched scream.

The last soldier, the one gripping her by the hair, was left dumbfounded and alone. Widowmaker reached around and smashed her fist into his chin, an uppercut into a weak point she knew existed in the Talon standard-issue helmets. The man gave a muffled “oof!”, lost his grip and staggered backwards. Widowmaker scrambled to her feet and delivered a roundhouse kick straight into his gut. He toppled over the side and was gone.

Widowmaker scooped up his rifle and flattened herself against the roof. The other Talon mercs, the ones approaching from the front of the train, had finally reached her. She fired, adjusted her aim for the unfamiliar gun, fired again. One of them went down, clutching his shoulder.

And then her view was obstructed as something smashed down onto the train right in front of her.

Her first thought was that she was looking at some kind of omnic, bright blue and heavily armoured. It certainly moved with a whirring of servos and a deadly mechanical grace. The mercs opened fire on it, bullets ricocheting off its armour. The thing raised its arm, there was a streak of smoke, and the mercs vanished in a flash of fire.

It wasn’t until the thing turned around and Widowmaker saw the human mouth in the thing’s head – set in a stern frown – that she realised it wasn’t an omnic but a person in a suit of armour. A suit of armour she was very glad she wasn’t on the receiving end of.

Whoever this person was, the armour definitely augmented their strength. They picked up Widowmaker like she weighed nothing, tucked her under an arm, and jumped down heavily towards the door Tracer had opened. Widowmaker was dumped unceremoniously on a cold metal floor, her Widow’s Kiss rifle clattering after her as the armoured person kicked it in after her from where it had fallen, and she heard the hiss- _thump_ of the door slamming closed.

She sat up, rubbing her scalp where the soldiers had torn some of her hair out. The inside of the carriage was bare metal walls and floor with porthole-like windows. A few fluorescent lights flickered on.

“Y’know, when I said Winston would send a bird to pick us up, this wasn’t what I had in mind,” she heard Tracer say.

Widowmaker looked round. The person in the power armour had taken their helmet off, revealing jet-black hair and an eye tattoo that stirred all kinds of memories in her head.

“Don’t worry,” Pharah said with a lopsided grin, “the cav-”

“Alright!” Tracer whooped, punching the air and beaming. She turned to Widowmaker and pointed at Pharah. “The cavalry’s here!”

Pharah sighed. “You know, Tracer, just once, I’d like to use that line.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty confident that everything's going to go wrong in the next chapter. Hope you liked this one!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said this was the chapter where everything might go wrong. Turns out that meant for me as well as the fic! But it's done now, and I hope you like it.

Widowmaker clambered to her feet, still a little unsteady after her near-capture and the constant swaying of the train. Pharah eyed her coolly.

Once again Widowmaker was struck by how much like her mother she looked. She’d only seen Ana Amari once in her time as Widowmaker, through a sniper scope in a dusty Middle Eastern city, but Lacroix had plenty of memories of Overwatch’s premier sniper.

Likewise, she had only seen Pharah once or twice since her capture by Overwatch. Through cell windows and tempered glass, the other woman giving her a cursory glance before hurrying off with a stony expression. This was the first time they’d met without bars in the way.

“Lacroix,” Pharah said, turning to properly face her.

“Amari,” Widowmaker replied, started to add, “and it’s Widow-”

Before she could say any more Pharah lashed out, the micro-motors in her suit whirring. Widowmaker tried to parry the blow, and if it had been anyone else lunging at her she would have succeeded. But Pharah moved with augmented strength. Her fist smashed into Widowmaker’s face and she collapsed back to the floor.

In an instant Tracer was between the two of them, her eyes wide.

“Whoa, whoa! What the hell?”

Pharah shoved her aside and gripped Widowmaker by the neck, hauling her off the floor and dangling her in mid-air. Widowmaker choked and scrabbled at Pharah’s hand but the armoured gauntlet around her throat just clenched tighter.

“Let her go!” Tracer roared.

Pharah clenched her jaw. “What’s the saying? An eye for an eye?”

“‘Makes the whole world blind’, was how I was told it ended,” Tracer snapped. She ducked under Pharah’s arm and stood between them again. “Let her _go_.”

 Pharah didn’t even seem to notice her. “By rights,” she spat at Widowmaker, the hate in her voice palpable, “I should kill you here and now.”

“No-one’s killin’ anyone!” Tracer shouted. Widowmaker gurgled and tried to speak.

“You took my _mother_ from me,” Pharah hissed. “Do you have _any_ idea what it’s like to go through that?”

As best she could, Widowmaker shook her head.

Pharah blinked. She hadn’t been expecting a response other than defiance. For a moment she was thrown off her stride, but then the anger came back. “And you turned it into a game,” she snapped. “Shot down the scope? I know what that means to people like you. Just killing her wasn’t enough, you had to prove you were _better_.”

“Fareeha, you’re not thinking straight. Put her down, we’ve got bigger fish to fry!” Tracer yelled, tugging at Pharah’s arm.

 _Put her down_. Poor choice of words, Widowmaker thought distantly as she fought for air. She gasped and coughed, choked out a few desperate words.

There was a pause. “What did you just say?” Pharah asked quietly.

Widowmaker tapped the hand around her neck insistently. After a moment, Pharah relented, and dumped her back onto the train carriage’s cold floor.

“I said,” Widowmaker wheezed, “I said it wasn’t a lethal shot.”

“I know. She’s still alive, no thanks to you.”

Widowmaker scoffed as she rubbed her bruised throat. “Of course she is.”

“Oh, you’d better believe she is. Maybe I’ll introduce you, back in Gibraltar.”

To one side, Tracer breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Back in Gibraltar’ meant that Pharah had abandoned her plans to kill Widowmaker on the spot, at least for now.

“No, I mean it. I always suspected she was.”

Pharah squinted suspiciously, not following.

“Any sniper…” Widowmaker began, then paused to cough some more, “…any sniper knows scope shots are seldom lethal.”

She looked up into Pharah’s eyes.

“The scope takes the impact. It shatters, throws the bullet off course. You get shrapnel wounds but rarely a kill. Lose an eye, maybe. Right?”

Pharah nodded wordlessly.

“My conditioning demanded that I kill her. Lacroix’s… my… memories of her… demanded that I did not.”

She looked down at the floor, as if embarrassed.

“It was the first time my conditioning failed during combat. I did not know what to do… it was all I could think of.”

Pharah looked like someone who’s just realised the ground they’re on is not as stable as they’d hoped.

“Perhaps you should introduce us, if I ever make it back to Gibraltar,” Widowmaker continued after a moment. “I have amends to make, I think.”

That earned her a scowl from Pharah. “You certainly do,” she said. She hesitated for a second, then extended a hand and helped Widowmaker get to her feet. “And I’ll see to it that you make them.”

“We all friends again?” Tracer asked, butting in.

“No,” both Widowmaker and Pharah said, almost in unison. There was an awkward glance between them.

Tracer didn’t even try to hide her laughter. “Yeah, we’re friends again,” she grinned.

The other two huffed and grumbled under their breath but said nothing.

“Right, now that’s settled: Pharah. What’s the plan?” Tracer asked, clapping her hands together in a way that said ‘let’s get on with this’.

At the mention of the word ‘plan’ Pharah groaned and shook her head.

“The plan was simple,” she sighed.

She pulled a small hologram projector from her belt and thumbed it on. An anti-grav kept it hovering in the air as it shone a diagram around them.

“This is the train line,” Pharah explained, pointing to a black line that wriggled across what Tracer recognised as a map of south-east England. “Here is where it enters the Channel Tunnel. This here-” she pointed at a glowing dot in the sea to the south “-is a boat Winston and 76 have procured for our use. The plan is, or rather _was_ , for me to use my suit to get you both off this train before it enters the tunnel. Once that’s done you find a car, make your way to the coast, and those two will pick you up. Meanwhile Talon, thinking you’re still either in London or on the train, ends up chasing empty air.”

“Sounds good!” Tracer said. “Wait… so what’s the problem?”

“Athena, could you show us current Talon forces in the area?” Pharah asked.

“ _Of course, Captain Amari_ ,” came a disembodied voice from a speaker in the floating projector.

Red spots began to appear on the map.

“ _These are the known locations of all Talon operatives in the south-east, tracked by GPS_ ,” Athena said.

“Oh…kayyy…” Tracer said. The map looked like it had developed a bad case of chickenpox. “There’s a lot of ‘em, ‘aint there?”

“ _Compréhensible_ ,” Widowmaker said. “Twice now we have eluded them. Talon needs to make an example of us to save face.”

“What’s _that_?” Tracer asked, leaning and pointing at what looked like a red worm wriggling down the track after them.

“ _Another mag-lev train. Unscheduled departure, three carriages,_ ” Athena informed her.

“And full of Talon.”

“ _Unfortunately, yes._ ”

Tracer swore, then rounded on Pharah. “And while all this was climbing up our arses, you wasted time beating on her?” she said angrily, gesturing at Widowmaker.

Pharah didn’t meet her eyes.

“I’m not mad,” Tracer said. “I’ll save that for when we’ve got the time, okay? Right now we gotta get in gear, because we’re about to be up to our necks.”

There were nods of agreement, some more sheepish than others.

“Right, love, how quickly can you get us off this train?” she asked Pharah.

“Quickly enough. But I can only take one at a time. My suit’s not rated to carry much more than its own weight.”

“Feel like making an exception? Just this once?”

Pharah shook her head. “This train is nearly transonic and we’re heading into a fogbank. Those are already bad enough conditions, I don’t want to add weight issues into the mix. The landing will be hard enough as it is.”

“Fine,” Tracer huffed, “one at a time it is. But you take her first, you hear me?”

Both Widowmaker and Pharah started to object.

“Shut up, both of you. I can recall off the train if I need to, or blink off if I’m really desperate. But that grappling hook won’t do you much good at these speeds.”

Widowmaker shrugged in begrudging agreement.

“Plus, that means _you_ can’t leave her behind by accident,” Tracer added, jabbing a finger into Pharah’s armoured chest.

Pharah glowered but said nothing.

“Now, let’s get cracking,” Tracer said. “Everyone onto the roof!”

Pharah shook her head. “Not so fast. There’s still Talon to deal with first. Athena? What’s the concentration on Talon forces within visual range looking like?”

“ _Mag-lev train approaching from the north with an escort of three aircraft,_ ” Athena replied. “ _Secondary units are approaching by road but will take time to get here._ ”

“If those aircraft or the soldiers on the train spot us, we’re done for,” Pharah said. “They’ll run you two down before you get half a kilometre from the tracks.”

“So we gotta take them out before we can leave.”

“The aircraft will not be a problem,” Widowmaker said. “Between your rockets and my rifle I think we have those covered.”

Pharah nodded curtly. “Agreed. The train will prove more of an issue.”

“I may be able to help with that too,” Widowmaker said, and pulled a venom mine from her belt. “Lace our train with these, and the odds shift in our favour if it is boarded.”

Tracer nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll set ‘em along the train if you two want to see about taking out those planes.”

“Works for me,” Pharah said. “You both got comm-links?”

“Yeah.”

Pharah moved to one side and packed away the holographic projector. While she was checking the armaments on her suit, Widowmaker shoved the last of her venom mines into Tracer’s hands.

“Hey, love?” Tracer asked quietly.

“ _Oui_?”

“What you said about you and Ana… about the shot you took… was that true?”

Widowmaker glanced at her with an unreadable expression.

“It kept her hand from my throat,” she whispered.

Tracer inhaled slowly.

“So you just made it up?”

“I didn’t say that.”

 “What, then?” Tracer frowned.

“My conditioning broke that day, _oui_. But I didn’t feel regret, I felt anger. She surprised me, she wounded me. She was _better_ than me. And in my anger, I missed. I had aimed for her head, not her scope.”

Tracer raised an eyebrow. “Hmm. Y’know, love, I’m not all that happy with you lying to Fareeha about this.”

Widowmaker bobbed her head to one side as if to say ‘fair enough’. “If I do tell her the truth, it will be when she does not have that damned armour on.” She thought for a moment. “And maybe when I am on a different continent, _non_?”

Tracer smirked. “Not sure that’ll save you.”

Behind them Pharah finished her suit checks and called over. “Everybody ready?”

“Yup!” Tracer replied.

“As I shall ever be,” Widowmaker muttered.

Pharah shoved a new clip into her rocket launcher and slung it over her shoulder.

“Then let’s get started.”

 

* * *

 

On the deck of the trawler out in the English Channel, Soldier 76 paced restlessly up and down.

“She must have reached the train by now,” he said as he passed the door to the bridge for the umpteenth time.

Winston, busying himself with readouts from the upgraded engines he and Torbjörn had hastily bolted into the boat when it became apparent they’d need it, looked up at him. Worry was written across his face too.

“I suppose there’s little we can do,” he said.

76 grunted. “Maybe. But I hate waiting around.”

“You never used to be this impatient,” Winston said with a sad little smile. "Used to be Gabriel we could never keep on the leash." There was no malice in his words this time, just a gloomy recognition of how much the years had changed his old friends.

76 gripped the railing on the ship’s side and gazed out into the fog, as if he thought he might be able to glimpse the train all those miles away. He nodded distantly.

“Guess I've gotten used to charging in head-on. I think I see why he liked it so much,” he murmured.

 

* * *

 

“Sir, if I may?” The merc commander approached Reaper tentatively, raising her voice over the howl of the train’s engines. They were running them flat out to catch up with the one the Overwatch agents were on, and were slowly but steadily catching up.

“ _Go on_.”

“The three VTOLs accompanying us all have cargo capacity. I can take some soldiers across in them and arrive before our main force. Catch them by surprise.”

“ _No_.”

“But, sir…”

“ _No. We’ve already lost one. Sending more out ahead of our forces invites an attack, and we do not know their capabilities. The other team we sent in reported another party may have joined the fray. Before,_ ” he added meaningfully, “ _we lost contact with them_.”

The commander frowned under her mask. “If we are fast enough…”

Reaper angled his mask at her. “ _If the years have taught me anything, commander, it is that patience is a virtue_ _._ ”

“Yes, sir.”

From the front of the train: “All units! Contact ahead!”

“ _You see, commander? Good things come, to those who wait._ ”

 

* * *

 

 _Three against one_ , Pharah thought as the jets on her back flared and she leapt off the train roof. The kick of acceleration made her teeth snap together as she shot up into the sky. _I’ve had better odds_.

She could see the other train already, hurtling down the track in pursuit, coming up behind their own. Three VTOLs hung in the air above it, their anti-gravs fizzing and sparking as they strained to keep up.

Behind her, the fog bank over the Channel loomed up like a wall. In the distance she could see the circle of darkness that was the entrance to the Channel Tunnel. They didn’t have long. If they were forced to enter that tunnel, she didn’t rate their chances.

Putting those thoughts to the back of her mind, she faced forwards and accelerated harder. The Raptora was designed for ground-attack rather than air-to-air and its targeting computer complained as she tried to lock onto the lead VTOL.

“Lacroix, are you in position?” she asked.

The reply crackled in her earpiece: “Yes. And it’s Widowm-”

“Good. Distract the one on the right, I’m going in.”

“ _D’accord_.”

A moment later there was a flash of light from the rightmost VTOL. A spray of sparks erupted from one of its anti-grav engines. The red glow flickered and dimmed. The craft wobbled in the air and began to weave around as the engine gave a few last coughs and went cold. With an engine down the VTOL began to fall back, unable to keep pace with the speeding train.

“Nicely done,” Pharah said, trying not to sound too impressed.

“ _Comme toujours_.” _As always_.

The VTOL in the middle rose up to meet her, its autocannons spinning up. It let loose a torrent of fire and she jinked out of the way, engines howling. She sent a barrage of rockets back at it from her launcher but most of them went wide. One exploded close enough to short out one of the VTOL’s anti-gravs for a fraction of a second, causing it to shiver in the air like the blast had dazed it.

 _Guess I need to get closer_ , Pharah decided.

Her Raptora was more nimble than the VTOLs, so at least she had that advantage. She arced up and around, speeding out of the way of another barrage of fire as the second VTOL opened up on her. The first tried to follow her while the second kept its distance, filling the air around her with bullets.

A flip, a dive, and now she was coming back down, hurtling towards the craft that was chasing her through the sky. Again she fired, and this time her aim was better. Rockets burst around the VTOL, puncturing its skin and tearing it to pieces. Black smoke began to vent from gashes in its hull as it span out of control. Pharah dived past it as it tumbled out of the air, watching with satisfaction as it smashed down into a field a few hundred metres from the tracks and erupted in a ball of blue-tinged fire. Its hydrogen cells going up, she guessed.

 _Pharah: 1, Talon: 0,_ she thought smugly.

She swooped down, skimmed the top of the Talon train, soared back up.

“Rocket team on the roof,” said Widowmaker in her ear. “Leave them to me.”

A glance down showed three tiny figures atop the train, pointing weapons up at her. The Raptora started warning her about missile lock-ons. She prepared for evasive manoeuvres.

“ _Une… deux… et trois_.” One by one the figures crumpled and fell. “You’re clear.”

“Copy that.”

The second VTOL was keeping its distance from her, falling back as she surged towards it, knowing it had the advantage at long range. She powered forward, trying to close the gap.

All of a sudden her suit was screaming at her. She heard the whip and whine of bullets tearing the air around her but the VTOL she was aiming for wasn’t firing. Something smacked into her midsection and damage reports flared across her vision. The impact sent her spinning across the sky.

“ _Ibn el-kalb!_ ” she swore, and then briefly wondered what her mother would make of such language. She looked about wildly. There, creeping around behind her, was the VTOL whose engine Widowmaker had shot out. It had found enough strength to keep up, barely, with the rest, and had sprung an ambush on her.

Trapped between the two aircraft, Pharah didn’t like her chances at all.

“Lacroix!”

“ _Widowma-_ ”

“Get this damn thing off my back or I can’t do anything!”

Another salvo of bullets, from the VTOL she’d been chasing this time. It aimed carefully so as not to hit the one behind her, its pilot twirling it through the air to attack her from an angle. Pharah ducked and dodged as best she could.

An impact made her bones rattle. More damage reports and a siren in her ears. “ _Flight systems compromised_ ,” the suit’s AI droned. “ _Advise descent to ground_.”

“Negative, suit, negative! Run diagnostics and auto-repair.”

“ _Confirmed._ ”

She was heavy on her left side, she realised. The thruster must have been damaged. _Damn_.

The air whistled in her ears as she dropped back down, hurtling towards the train below, gambling that the VTOL gunships would be unwilling to fire on her for risk of hitting their comrades. She fired a few rockets in her wake, small airburst rounds that were little more than a distraction.

Bullets scorched after her, and then there was a loud _bang_ and the sound of engines failing.

For a moment she was terrified that her suit had malfunctioned. Her hear skipped a beat and her stomach dropped. But no warning sirens screamed in her ears and no error messages splashed across her visor. Her jump jets still responded, the left one still sluggishly, as she dropped out of the sky and landed heavily on the Talon train roof. Shock absorbers in her suit’s legs went _crunch_ as they took the strain.

Up in the sky above her, the damaged VTOL was falling.

Already wounded by Widowmaker’s first shot, now it was dead. Pharah thought she could see broken glass instead of the matte-black canopy where the cockpit normally was. It spiralled out of the sky, anti-gravs flickering, nearly slamming into the other VTOL which cartwheeled out of the way, and landed heavily on the tracks behind the train, kicking up a great plume of dust and grit.

Two down, one to go.

But her jump jets were really starting to complain now as she pushed off into the sky once more. Warning after warning sounded in her helmet. The Raptora hadn’t been designed for these tight turns and anti-armour cannons.

“Lacroix, I’m coming back to you! Move back up the train and cover me!”

“ _Pour l’amour de Dieu…_ I copy, moving.”

Pharah arced round, gave her suit’s engines one last burst of thrust, and hurtled towards the train Widowmaker and Tracer were on. The gunship screamed through the sky after her.

The gap between the two trains was appreciably closer than it had been when she’d flown in the other direction. Talon would catch up in minutes.

“Athena, come in.”

“ _Present_ ,” came a voice in her ear.

“Time until the tunnel entrance?”

“ _Calculating… you have fifteen minutes, Captain Amari. Hurry!_ ”

When the machine intelligences started to panic, that was when you had to worry.

“Tracer! Where are you?”

“Rear carriage! I got two venom mines left to set. Oh, Talon’s gonna have a _nasty_ surprise if they board us!” Tracer cackled over the comms.

“Move up as soon as you can, back to the carriage we started in,” Pharah commanded.

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

A bullet whipped past her. The ground ahead erupted in tiny geysers of dirt as the gunship behind her fired again.

“Lacroix! Keep them busy!”

“The thought had occurred to me,” Widowmaker drawled.

Pharah came barrelling down and landed heavily on the roof of a carriage near the back of the train, the metal buckling under the impact. On the carriage behind her Widowmaker was down on one knee, firing shot after shot at the approaching VTOL. They sparked off the flanks of the craft but didn’t hit anything vital, the pilot jinking and swerving to throw her aim off.

Both of them dived for cover as the gunship strafed the roof of the train, roaring overhead and performing a lazy turn in the air above. It straightened out and began to come for them again.

“Last mine set!” Tracer called in from below. “Moving up! What’s going on up there?”

“It’s under control!” Pharah yelled back.

“Allegedly,” she heard Widowmaker mutter under her breath as she scrambled for cover from the approaching gunship.

“Watch and learn,” she shot back.

As the VTOL swooped down, guns spinning up again, she braced herself.

“Raptora, barrage on my mark.”

“ _Confirmed._ ”

Someone – she could never remember who – had once remarked that quantity had a quality all of its own. Pharah prepared to put that to the test.

“ _Now!_ ” she roared as the VTOL swept in low, its cannon blazing. At once, her suit went into overdrive. Ports opened along its flanks and began vomiting out micro-missiles which streaked up towards the gunship. Pharah had to push forward against the backblast to keep herself upright. Explosions peppered the hide of the VTOL, blasting open great holes. It dipped, staggered like it had been punched, tried to rise. Pharah kept it locked on as it tumbled through the air above her, flipping end-over-end and pouring smoke, pummelling it with the last of her missiles.

She gave it a mock-salute as it fell out of the sky, and then she saw where it was headed, and her triumph turned to horror.

The VTOL’s engines gave one last mournful howl and then sputtered out. It dropped like a brick, belching smoke and flame, and smashed into the second-to-last carriage of their train with a roar of breaking metal and the _whoosh_ of igniting fuel cells. Twisted and torn shards of metal and glass sprayed upwards. The impact shook the train hard enough to throw Pharah to the roof. She tasted blood in her mouth.

Groaning, she staggered to her feet as Widowmaker stumbled towards her. A stray bit of shrapnel had cut a bloody groove into her cheek but other than that the other woman’s blue-grey skin was unmarred.

“Bought us some time,” Pharah gasped, taking an experimental step forward and wincing at the sound of grinding gears coming from her knee joint.

Widowmaker’s face was an awful mix of fury and fear as she gripped Pharah by her armoured shoulders.

“ _Where was Tracer_?” she demanded, her eyes wide.

The bottom dropped out of Pharah’s stomach.

 

* * *

 

“Sir! All three escort craft are down, sir!”

Reaper growled in annoyance. What he wouldn’t give for some soldiers worth the name.

“Your orders, sir?”

“ _The wreckage will slow them down. Full speed ahead, commander_.”

He rose to his feet and made his way deliberately to the head of the Talon train. Stood at the front, next to the drivers, he checked his shotguns, cracked his neck. The ruined tail of the other train was a few short metres away. Wreckage shaken loose from it bounced and clattered against his locomotive’s armoured front.

He would give Widowmaker a good death, he decided. Her and the others. They’d definitely earned that much.

 

* * *

 

Widowmaker was the first through the door, wrenching it aside with her bare hands when the hydraulics wouldn’t open it fast enough. A cloud of acrid smoke billowed out, stinging and thick, making her choke and retch. She tasted venom gas on her tongue, the remnants of her mines set off by the explosion. Her goggles flipped down to protect her eyes.

“Tracer? Tracer!” she shouted.

The carriage had escaped the worst of the impact, although the back of it was a twisted tangle of burning metal. The magnets in this part of the train had failed and the back of it ground along the track. The vibrations made Widowmaker’s teeth rattle.

Silhouetted against the fire and shrouded by the smoke, a figure staggered towards her.

“Tracer!”

“Bloody hell, love!” came the response. “What the _fuck_ was that?”

She was hurt, Widowmaker could tell just by the croak of her voice. As she tottered closer, as Widowmaker dashed to reach her, she clutched her stomach with one hand and her face was ashen.

Widowmaker reached her just as she collapsed.

“Thought it was the end of the bloomin’ world for a second,” Tracer gasped. There was blood on her lips, Widowmaker caught a glimpse of shattered teeth. Her orange goggles were cracked too, she noticed.

“Pharah brought the gunship down right on top of you,” Widowmaker hissed. She didn’t want to sound too accusatory. Somewhere deep down, she knew what had happened was no-one’s fault. But that was cold comfort.

“Daft woman,” Tracer giggled, then coughed. “Not happy ‘till everything’s blown up.”

There was a grinding of damaged servos. Pharah limped into view, the right leg of her armour cracked and broken. “Tracer!”

“No need to shout, love, I’m right here…”

“Is she okay?”

Gingerly, Widowmaker moved Tracer’s hand from her stomach. Her palm came away sticky and red. There was a deep gash in her side, running from navel to hip. Shrapnel glinted inside.

“She’s hurt. Badly.”

“Nah, it’s fine…” Tracer said, her eyelids drooping.

“We need to get her out of here,” Pharah said. “Athena?” she asked, raising a finger to her ear. “How soon until the tunnel?”

Her face fell at the answer.

“Well, how long?” Widowmaker demanded.

“Not long. Minutes, maybe less. We need to move _now_.”

Widowmaker was suddenly filled with the urge to kill Pharah, to snatch up her rifle and but a bullet through the exposed jaw of the woman who might just have – however accidentally – killed the first person to care about her since she was born on that Talon operating slab. But the feeling was fleeting.

 _The old Widowmaker would never have let this happen_ , some cruel part of her said.

She fought that part of her back down.

“Go,” she said. “Keep the roof clear. I’ll bring her up.”

Pharah nodded, turned on her heel, hurried off with a whirr of tortured servos.

“You’re going to be fine, _chérie_ ,” she said as she knelt down next to Tracer. There was more blood on her lips and as she coughed it spattered up onto Widowmaker’s arms.

“Yeah, right,” Tracer grinned weakly.

“Could you… rewind? Heal yourself that way?”

Tracer shook her head and groaned. “Rule two of time travel: don’t rewind in a moving vehicle. You end up outside. _Splat_.”

“Oh,” Widowmaker said lamely.

Tracer gripped her wrist, hard.

“Love, _go_. Don’t hang around. Talon must be right on top of us, yeah? _Go_.”

Widowmaker didn’t think she’d ever been more likely to disobey an order. Carefully, she picked Tracer up in her arms and began carrying her towards the carriage door. The clattering of the damaged train made it hard to keep her balance and she nearly fell more than once.

“Oi! You deaf, love?” Tracer wheezed. “Aint no way we’re both gettin’ out of this. Get out of here!”

Widowmaker didn’t reply.

Eventually she emerged onto the roof of the carriage, Tracer slung across her shoulders. Pharah was crouched behind a power coupling a few metres away, watching the approaching Talon train with a grim expression.

Behind them, the entrance to the tunnel loomed like a monster’s mouth.

“If Talon sees us jump off the train it’s all over!” Pharah yelled over the wind and the screech of tortured steel as Widowmaker drew level with her and gently dropped Tracer down next to her. “They’ll know to look for you on this side of the tunnel and there’s no way you’ll make it to the coast in time!”

Widowmaker nodded, her mind racing. There had to be a way out, there had to be, they’d gotten so _close_ …

Next to her, Tracer drifted in and out of consciousness. Pharah reached over and tried pressing her wound closed.

Of course there was a way out, Widowmaker realised. Always had been.

She stood up for a moment, gauged the distance to the other train and the tunnel, then crouched back down.

“Go,” she said to Pharah. “Get her to the coast, to that boat. Is there medical equipment on board?”

“You think Mercy would let it leave port without some?”

“Good. Then save her.”

“And you?” Pharah asked.

“I shall buy you some time.”

Tracer looked groggily from one to the other. “Wha…? No…”

Widowmaker reached round behind Tracer, to the back of the harness that held her chronal accelerator in place, detached something there with a plastic _click_ , and stepped back.

Both Tracer and Pharah’s eyes went wide at the sight of Tracer’s pulse bomb in Widowmaker’s hand.

“Love, no…”

“You sure about this, Lacroix?”

Widowmaker sucked in a breath, steeled herself, nodded.

“Very well. And thank you,” Pharah said quietly, barely audible over the roar of the wind.

Very quickly, so fast the half-conscious Tracer barely registered it, Widowmaker bent down and pressed a kiss to Tracer’s lips.

“ _Adieu, chérie_.”

There wasn’t much more to say. Or rather there was, so much, more than perhaps she ever could, but they were out of time. Pharah scooped Tracer up, slinging the injured woman’s arms around her neck, and marched to the edge of the roof.

She gave Widowmaker one last backwards glance, then ignited her jump jets and soared off.

And not a moment too soon. The darkness of the tunnel was coming, speeding along the length of the train.

Widowmaker walked to the edge of the carriage, looked down at the Talon train that was almost coupled to the wreckage at the end of hers. Was that Reaper she could see, glaring up at her through the front window and that ghoulish mask? A part of her hoped so.

The bomb was easy to arm. She’d seen Tracer do it through her scope enough times. And as the darkness of the Channel Tunnel rushed over her, she drew back her arm and threw it, up into the path of the oncoming train, up towards the concrete wall of the tunnel that held up thousands of tonnes of earth.

A bright blue and white glare washed the tunnel, scorching it.

“ _Adieu, chérie_ ,” she said again, and the words went with her into the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end... or is it?


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'll just write a short epilogue," I thought, and now it's 2am, I haven't slept, and we're looking at even more chapters ahead. Send help.

For Tracer, it was like the aftermath of the Slipstream all over again.

She faded in and out of consciousness, the world blurring around her. Strange shapes flitted around her head and odd noises rang in her ears. Things she almost recognised passed her by and were gone.

The only difference was that after the Slipstream it hadn’t hurt. But it did now. Pain rolled around her body in great crashing waves, setting her nerve endings alight.

Everything went by in a whirl.

Blue armour on her burning skin, clouds flashing past, the roar of engines. Wet tricking down her sides and the rich tang of blood in her mouth.

Fog all around her, water below her, the whole world washed grey. Someone was calling her name, shouting to be heard over howling jets.

Something loomed up out of the water, wooden deck, steel masts. A heavy landing made her body flare with agony. More voices. What were they saying?

Faces loomed in her vision. A metallic mask with a blazing red eye slit, a blue-and-gold beak with a human jaw. A burly figure in white and grey hurried over, she heard strange mechanical noises, the lap of waves. A seagull wheeled in the air above her and for some reason Tracer fixed on its mournful cry.

A heavy _clunk_ , something set down next to her. _Hiss_. _Click_.

Was that Winston, looking down at her? She hoped so. Something was wrong, she knew that much. But it’d be nothing he couldn’t fix.

Warm hands gripped hers. “Just stay with us, Lena. Promise?”

“Whatever ya need, big fella,” she tried to say.

Something cold jabbed her neck. She thought she saw a golden-glowing syringe out of the corner of her eye.

Then she was gone.

 

* * *

 

She came to in a sterile white room with an angel hovering over her. Fragments of conversations flitted past her like bats on a summer’s night. Gone before she really noticed they were there.

“…stabilised but we have to move fast…”

“…scans of her chest cavity coming in now…”

“…steady, steady…”

Why were the lights so bright? Where was she?

“…severe haematoma, we’ve got to repair…”

“…nanobiotic swarm online…”

A mass of mechanical limbs slid into view, multi-segmented arms ending in vicious-looking blades and needles. They flexed and trembled like they were alive, sizing her up, waiting to pounce.

“…first incision commencing…”

 She felt her flesh part beneath a whirring saw. There was no pain.

“… _gott,_ how much shrapnel was…”

A high-pitched tone, shrill, electronic, insistent.

“…can’t lose her now…”

She fell back into oblivion.

 

* * *

 

This too felt like the Slipstream, but earlier, just after the matrix failed, before she found her way back to the waking world. Floating in darkness, no up or down, no time, no feeling, just her thoughts and the endless emptiness.

Red lenses flared next to her and she recoiled instinctively.

“Oxton.”

“L-love? That you?”

The red slid back and dimmed. Two yellow irises took its place.

“ _Oui_.”

“Oh, thank God. But… wait, _how_?”

“Perhaps we are both dead.”

The way the emphasis in _both_ fell, implied one already was.

“Wha… no, no, we can’t be… can we?”

Hands gripped her cheeks, held her head in a grip of ice.

“Perhaps, perhaps not. There is only one way to know for sure.”

“But…”

“Your doctor has a saying, _non_? She loves spouting that silly line. ‘Heroes never die.’ Well, in Talon, we had a similar one.”

A hard shove sent Tracer spinning through the dark. There was a roaring and a rushing in her ears like she was stood next to waterfall.

“They’re not dead until you find the body.”

The noise in her ears grew louder, so loud she could barely hear:

“Come find me, _chérie_.”

The noise became deafening. Light flared in her vision, shunting aside the dark. Tracer was engulfed in a searing white glare.

It took a moment for her to be able to see again. When she could she looked around, squinting against the light.

She was in a hospital ward, all bright white and muted pastels. Beds stretched off in either side, empty. The sickbay of Watchpoint: Gibraltar. A window at the far end looked out over the Strait of Gibraltar, Tracer could see the lights of a ship out on the water.

“Well whaddya  know,” she murmured blearily. “Made it back after all.” Some of her teeth felt strange in her mouth.

A snore made her look round. For a moment her heart soared. _Did she make it back too?_

But it was Fareeha, not Widowmaker, who lay sprawled on the bed next to her, dressed in a tank top and sweatpants like she’d just come from a workout. Tracer’s heart didn’t exactly sink – she was still incredibly glad Fareeha had made it off the train too – but she still caught herself not being quite as buoyed as she should have been by that news.

 _She’s probably already been discharged_ , she told herself.

To her left a machine next to her bed started beeping. As she looked over at it, she noticed a bunch of grapes on her bedside table. Tracer smiled weakly at the cliché. Probably old Reinhardt’s doing, the great big softie.

“So you’re awake!”

Tracer looked round. The door at the far end of the room that led to the doctor’s office had opened and Angela had stuck her head through.

“Just about,” Tracer said, quietly, so as not to wake Fareeha. “How long’ve I been out?”

“Four days,” Angela said as she came over and checked Tracer’s pulse. “And you’re lucky it wasn’t longer. They brought you back in bad shape.”

“Feels like it,” Tracer winced, as Angela began prodding and poking at her.

“Poor Fareeha’s been keeping an eye on you since you got back,” Angela added, nodding at the next bed along. “She feels terrible about what happened. Holds herself responsible for the crash and everything else.”

“Wasn’t her fault,” Tracer protested.

“You try telling her that,” Angela sighed. “You know what she’s like.”

Tracer rolled her eyes in agreement.

“So… where’s Widowmaker? She okay?” Tracer asked after a moment, as Angela checked her bandages.

Angela’s face fell.

 

* * *

 

_Three weeks later:_

Watchpoint: Gibraltar was never quiet, even in the dead of night. Air conditioning systems hummed to themselves, computer panels bleeped contentedly, the superstructure of the base creaked and groaned as it cooled after the heat of the day.

Footsteps crept quietly down a corridor.

“ _Lena. You are up late_ ,” Athena said from a nearby speaker. Quietly, so as not to wake anyone else.

“Don’t I know it.”

“ _Dr Ziegler has recommended you get plenty of rest. Not_ ,” Athena added, plotting Tracer’s predicted route through the base and arriving at the only logical conclusion, “ _another coffee_.” Her voice followed Tracer down the corridor, jumping from speaker to speaker embedded in the ceiling.

“Yeah, well,” Tracer shrugged, ducking into the cafeteria and making a beeline for the coffee machine there. “Sue me.”

There was silence as Tracer jabbed at the machine with her finger. It gurgled, rumbled, coughed out a plastic cup and began to fill it with another espresso the colour of crude oil. Her third of the night. Athena pulled up a file on the side-effects of caffeine from her memory banks.

“ _I feel I should inform you that Winston and Dr Ziegler had a lengthy conversation concerning you earlier today_ ,” she said at last.

“Oh?”

“ _They are concerned for your mental state following your return from London_.”

Tracer scowled. “I’m fine.”

“ _Dr Ziegler seems to think otherwise_.”

Tracer bit her lip and said nothing.

“ _And I must inform you that I am concerned too_.”

“Really?” Tracer asked coolly.

“ _I am concerned for the safety and wellbeing of_ all _Overwatch agents._ ”

“I’m fine.”

Athena made a strange humming noise that might have been an agreement, or might have been something else entirely. Tracer raised an eyebrow. Overwatch’s AI could be remarkably tight-lipped when she wanted to be.

With the warmth of the coffee seeping through the plastic in her hand, Tracer started back towards her room.

She took a different route back. It was a habit – never be in the same place twice. Instead of the corridor straight back to her door, she walked the long way round, sipping her coffee and getting her tired thoughts in order.

Her route took her past Watchpoint: Gibraltar’s memorial wall.

It was a far cry from the main one that had been erected in Zurich back in the day. The memorial there, the one the public saw, had been an elegant sweep of marble and hard-light. The names and faces of the dead, every Overwatch agent who had fallen in the line of duty, looking stoically down on those who walked through Watchpoint: Zurich’s lobby. “For a better world”, according to the golden letters above it.

Tracer herself had been on that wall in Zurich, after the Slipstream incident. She was the only agent to ever have their name removed from it.

But here in Gibraltar the memorial was a smaller, more personal affair. Just an old noticeboard someone had pinned pictures to. Gibraltar’s private reminiscence of those who’d fallen while stationed there.

Tracer spared Amélie Lacroix a glance as she walked past. It was an old photo, the only one Tracer had been able to find when she’d gotten back. Widowmaker had been good at avoiding cameras. It was strange, Tracer thought, seeing her skin the colour it used to be.

“Y’know what they say, love,” she whispered as she walked past. “Heroes never die, ‘n all that.”

“ _If that were true, the memorial would not be needed_ ,” Athena pointed out from a nearby speaker.

Tracer grimaced. “No need to be like that.”

“ _My apologies._ ”

They spent the rest of Tracer’s walk back to her room in silence. The only way Tracer even knew the AI was still paying attention to her was the occasional quiet whirr of security cameras moving to track her.

Tracer shoved open her door, slouched into her room and closed it behind her. Her eyes took in the mess that was her personal quarters. Stacks of paperwork, old reports she’d never filed, holograms she always forgot to turn off. Dirty clothes and old food wrappers everywhere. An unmade bed in one corner, with a glass of water and a bottle of sleeping pills on the nightstand next to it.

She sat down heavily at her desk, shoved some old tablets aside, conjured a holographic screen into the air in front of her with a gesture.

“Athena?” She knew the AI was listening.

“ _Yes?_ ”

“You up for a bit of digging?”

“ _There are three shovels registered in Watchpoint: Gibraltar’s stockrooms. Shall I have one delivered to you?_ ”

“Har har. Reduce sarcasm protocols by 10 per cent.”

“ _You do not have administrator access, Lena. And I do not have sarcasm protocols, but that is beside the point._ ”

“Whatever. You ready?”

“ _You still have not said what for._ ”

“Get me every news article related to the crash in the Channel Tunnel.”

“ _Lena-_ ”

“Just do it.”

News reports started spilling across the holographic screen.

“ _Taking Dr Ziegler’s words to heart? That heroes never die?_ ”

Tracer gulped down some more coffee. “Nah,” she said. “More like they ain’t dead ‘till you find the body.”

 

* * *

 

Two days later and Tracer had barely slept. Two days of research and cross-referencing and hunting down the tiniest details. Now she paced restlessly back and forth in her quarters, her clothes sweat-stained and terrible bags dark under her eyes.

She pushed a lock of greasy hair out of her eyes and checked her computer screens again.

It had to be, she decided, it _had_ to be her. All the evidence…

What evidence? Anecdotes and hearsay, nothing concrete.

But what else could it be?

Coincidence. Her own sleep deprived mind seeing patterns where there were none.

She was trapped between two states. On the one hand, she’d stumbled upon something incredible. On the other, this was just another stage of grief having its way with her. Denial, probably.

There was a knock at her door.

“Come in,” she called absent-mindedly. “You’ll have to ignore the mess.”

She heard the door open and close but no footsteps sounded.

“Accept, yes, but not ignore. I find organic life’s ability to create such chaos... oddly fascinating.”

Tracer looked around in surprise. She’d been expecting Angela or Winston. But there, floating serenely above a pile of her dirty socks and a plate of sandwiches she’d never gotten around to eating, was Zenyatta.

“Plus,” he added with a good-natured chuckle, “I have no sense of smell. Right now, I imagine that is a benefit.”

“Hiya, Zen,” she said with a tired smile. “How’s it going?”

“I am well, thank you,” Zenyatta said. He looked at his surroundings, at the mess that had started off bad and only gotten worse. “But I feel that it is I that should be asking you that question.”

“I’m fine,” Tracer said, unconvincingly.

“Hmm. Are you certain? There is nothing that troubles you?”

Tracer didn’t answer, just stared at the floor and shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably.

“Perhaps a walk would clear your mind?” Zenyatta asked after it became clear he wasn’t going to get an answer. “The sun will rise soon.”

Tracer glanced at her clock. Where had the time gone, she wondered?

“Even if you choose not to meditate, I find merely observing the rising sun brings a measure of peace to oneself,” Zenyatta continued. “The promise of a new day brings hope for new beginnings.”

Tracer shook her head and grinned. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Make _everything_ that comes out of your mouth sound all profound and philosophical.”

“It is not my intention,” Zenyatta shrugged. “All I do is speak the truth as I see it.”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Remarkable. So, will you join me? At the very least, I believe it would benefit you to leave this room for a time.” He paused. “And if you will not do it for yourself, consider doing it for the rest of us.”

Tracer cocked her head. “Huh?”

“There is not a person in this base who is not concerned by your recent seclusion, Lena. That and Hana has begun to complain about the smell.”

Hana had the room opposite hers. Tracer winced. “It’s gotten _that_ bad?”

Zenyatta made a non-committal gesture. “I have, as I said, no sense of smell. I can only report what others have experienced. That said, my chassis _does_ have an on-board environmental analysis suite which some believe approximates the organic experiences of smell and taste.” He made a hissing noise like he was drawing breath. “The air in this room is rich in short-chain hydrocarbons and has an elevated level of carbon dioxide. Such an environment is not conducive to human health – physical or mental, I imagine.”

Tracer buried her head in her hands. “Y’know, love, you could just say it smells of bad breath and old farts,” she blushed.

“Ah, but could I? As I said, our senses are only approximations of each other’s. To say nothing of the different reactions the same stimuli will invoke in an organic and a machine.”

“Ugh. It’s too early in the morning for this kind of philosophy,” Tracer groaned.

“Then come and watch the sunrise. Or merely take a walk around the base. I promise I will be quiet if you do.”

“Determined to get me out, eh?”

“By hook or by crook, Lena,” Zenyatta chuckled.

“Let me grab my coat then.”

A minute or two later they were wandering down the Watchpoint’s steel corridors in the general direction of the surface. Tracer’s footsteps rang on the metal. As usual, Zenyatta didn’t make a sound above the gentle hum of his anti-gravs.

“Are you sure you do not wish to share any troubles with me?” Zenyatta asked after a while.

“I dunno…” Tracer said. “I feel like I’m just…”

“Yes?”

“D’you ever have that feeling when you’re so damn sure you’re right about something, and then a part of you just keeps insisting you’ve got it all arse-backwards?”

“Self-doubt plagues us all, Lena.”

“Yeah, but this feels like something more.”

“Perhaps if you told me more details, I could be of greater help.”

Tracer paused. _Fine_ , she thought. “It’s about Widowmaker.”

“I see.”

“She’s still alive.”

Zenyatta glanced over at her. The way the shadows played across his face in the Watchpoint’s underlit corridors, it looked like he was squinting at her. “Truly?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“But at the same time you doubt.”

“…yeah,” Tracer admitted with a shrug.

“Why do you think she is still alive?”

“Because I spent the last two days researching everything that’s going on in northern France, and Zen, I _swear_ something’s up over there.” She ran a hand through her hair, winced at the grease it left on her palm, wiped it on her jacket. “They’ve tried to keep a lid on it…”

“They?”

“Talon. Or the French government. Probably both.”

“I see.”

“They’ve tried to keep a lid on but they can’t pretend that _nothing’s_ happening. Okay, so, first thing’s first, that train she was on wasn’t destroyed in the explosion that brought down the tunnel. It derailed a few minutes later, further into the tunnel. So she might have survived. Then, the rescue team they sent down there got sworn to secrecy the moment they got back up to the surface. And on top of _that_ , four of that team were admitted to hospital in Calais with broken bones. Athena pulled their medical records for me to have a look over. They’re the kind of injuries you’d get in a fight.”

Zenyatta listened quietly. Tracer carried on, counting out her points on her fingers.

“Two days later, there’s a tiny little news article in a local paper in Calais. Five people dead outside a nightclub, no sign of their attacker. You’d think that’d make the regional, even the national news, right? But this never got out of Calais, like someone tried to bury it. A few days after that, there’s a police report about a carjacking on the motorway from Calais to Lille, near Belgium. Driver says his car was nicked by a lady with weird skin and a huge rifle. Case gets palmed off to some special police division I’ve never heard of. When was the last time elite coppers chased up carjackings?”

Tracer was getting more animated now, her tiredness slipping away. Zenyatta led her down another corridor, keeping quiet, letting her talk.

“And all the while Talon chatter keeps up. You’d think after we got away and she died, they’d cool back down, go back to their day jobs and keep on the down-low. But nah, Talon’s still out in full force in northern France. Still got troops on the ground. Athena couldn’t hack their comms but she could still see where they were, and they were all headed straight for the north-east. Then, about a week ago, three Talon platoons are rapid-deployed to Amiens, halfway between Calais and Paris. They go quiet after a couple of hours. Next morning the papers are saying a warehouse blew up and took a bunch of foreign contractors with it.”

Zenyatta said, “And I assume again the news was suppressed?”

“You got that right. Almost thirty dead in that blast and I doubt they heard about it in Paris. And then it gets really interesting. One of our old safehouses goes live.”

Once again Zenyatta glanced at Tracer.

“Athena registers an entry and a power surge in an old Overwatch safehouse in Paris. Someone’s come in and turned the lights on. Could be Talon trying to clean house, I suppose. But what if it’s not?”

Tracer blew out a long breath as they reached the end of a long corridor and passed through a set of large doors.

“And now Talon’s bearing down on Paris like no-one’s business. And I think they’re coming after her, I think they know she survived. And then I wonder whether I’m clutching at straws and I just can’t get over her being gone. So I dunno… wait, hang on. What’re we doing here?”

Tracer looked around. They weren’t outside, waiting for the sunrise. They were in the Watchpoint’s hangar. Overwatch’s last few VTOLs loomed out of the shadows.

“We not watchin’ the sunrise after all?” Tracer asked, confused. “You thinkin’ maybe a hangar’s a good place for an ex-pilot to meditate?”

The orbs around Zenyatta’s neck shifted a little. “Lena, I have something of a confession to make.”

“Huh?”

“I already knew everything you just told me.”

“ _What_?”

“I asked Athena what you had been doing in your room for two days, and she showed me the fruits of your research.”

Tracer looked indignant. “I asked her to keep that a secret!” she huffed.

Zenyatta held up his hands. “Do not be angry at her, please. She did it out of concern for you. Her programming prevents her from providing you with significant material aid at short notice without clearance from Zurich. Clearance which will obviously never arrive. But I am not so… shackled. Together we reviewed the evidence you collected,” he continued “and I agree it is inconclusive. Certainly, I doubt 76 or even Winston would authorise action on this alone. But I believe it is worth investigating.”

Tracer’s jaw fell open. “You believe me?”

“Perhaps not that Widowmaker is alive, but certainly that something has caught Talon’s attention, and that alone is curious.”

He gestured at the VTOL behind him. One of the enormous Orca models, built for long-haul flights.

“Athena cannot act, but I can call on people who can.”

As if on cue, a door popped open in the craft’s flank. A figure stood silhouetted in it, green highlights glowing on a brushed steel body.

“Master,” Genji said, hopping down gracefully from the hatch. “I’ve fuelled the craft, as you asked. And Lena! It’s good to see you out of your room at last.”

Tracer looked from one to the other like she was expecting to wake up.

“I do hope I’ve packed enough provisions to get you to Paris,” Genji said. “I’m afraid I wasn’t really sure how much would be needed.”

If he’d filled the Orca’s fuel cells she’d be able to fly round the world. Tracer grinned from ear to ear.

“You guys… I don’t even know what to say…” she said.

“No need,” Genji shrugged. It wasn’t a movement his body had been designed to make, it made his shoulders grate. “Overwatch gave me a second chance once, although at the time I did not see it for what it was. It would be wrong of me to deny another the same opportunity.”

“I must also consider that if Widowmaker is still alive,” Zenyatta added, “she will be alone, frightened, hunted by her old comrades and – so it will seem – abandoned by her new ones.” He made a mournful noise. “Despite our disagreements over the years I knew Mondatta very well. He would not have wished this fate on his killer. Indeed, he would have been the first to offer her redemption, had the bullet missed. But now that burden falls to us instead.”

Tracer nodded solemnly. “You two comin’ with me?” she asked, gesturing at the Orca.

“Sadly not,” Zenyatta said. “Much as I wish to assist you further, Overwatch is critically understaffed as it is. We may be needed elsewhere.” He made a little noise like laughter. “In addition, we may be required to soothe any ruffled feathers caused by your unscheduled departure.”

“Old 76 won’t be happy I’ve nicked one of our birds,” Tracer agreed happily.

“Exactly.” Zenyatta reached forward and rested a hand on Tracer’s shoulder. “And my advice still stands. When you leave, put on the autopilot and watch the sun rise. With every new day comes a chance to change the ills of the last.”

“You’re doing that thing again, Zen.”

“I know.”

“Good luck, Lena,” Genji called, as she dashed up the steps into the VTOL. “I hope fate smiles brighter upon you this time.”

The door hissed shut behind her.

She took a quick inventory before she took off. They’d left her a change of clothes, probably taken from the laundry room, her pulse pistols – where had she left those? She must’ve been more out of it than she thought – and what felt like enough fuel to get her almost to the moon. Tracer couldn’t stop herself from grinning.

Pre-flight checks were second nature to her. Within moment the VTOL’s engines where warming up. She waved to Zenyatta and Genji from the cockpit window.

“ _For formality’s sake, I must protest this course of action_ ,” came Athena’s voice from the Orca’s control panels. “ _And I must also wish you the best of luck_.”

“Thanks, love.”

The hangar doors above her swung open, letting in the first few rays of sunshine, and then she was away. Rock and steel flashed past as the Orca soared skywards, up through the core of the Rock of Gibraltar and out into the indigo sky of a Mediterranean dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing a chapter without Widowmaker in it feels weird. This will be heavily rectified soon.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first things first: over a thousand kudos (to say nothing of all the comments I haven't been able to reply to!). I'm blown away, honestly. I had no idea this fic was ever going to get this big and I'm now a little nervous about what I might have started...  
> Anyway, this is just a little intermediate chapter to keep me in the swing of writing this fic. It's not particularly plot-heavy like the last couple, I hope you like it all the same!

The Orca took about two hours to fly to Paris, keeping a low profile. Tracer could have lit the afterburners and been there in thirty minutes, but with Talon still watching France like a hawk she decided a high-speed burn across Western Europe would attract nothing but the wrong kind of attention.

So instead she instructed its autopilot to fly low, fly slow, and stay unnoticed. By all accounts it did so marvellously, passing through the sky like a ghost. The trick wasn’t to not be _seen_ , Tracer knew. The Orca wasn’t stealth-capable and anyone who looked out of a window would see its lumbering bulk flying by. The trick instead was simply not to be _noticed_. And all that meant was sending all the right codes to air traffic control, keeping within common flightpaths, and not getting in anybody’s way.

It was something one of her old girlfriends had taught her, back when they were both fifteen. That girl had been able to shoplift the till from under the cashier’s nose, and the trick, she had explained to Tracer one night as they sat out on one of the domicile complex’s balconies and watched the jetliners coming in to land over London, the trick was to just act normal. Maybe even buy something along with all the stuff you were nicking. “No-one ever remembers the normal ones,” she’d said with a grin. “And that’s why you’d make a crap shoplifter,” she’d added, looking askance at fifteen-year-old Tracer’s torn leggings, studded leather jacket and pink-dyed hair she’d just started styling into a windswept peak.

Now, with two hours to kill, Tracer got to work.

First, against her own natural instinct to immediately get up and do something, she followed Zenyatta’s advice. Sat in the pilot’s chair, feet up on the flight console, she watched the sun rise over the mountains of southern Spain. The eastern horizon slowly stained red as she watched it, from indigo to crimson to orange to gold and then finally, with a burst of light that hurt to look at, the edge of the sun emerged over the lip of the world. Tracer squinted against the glare and ordered the craft’s autopilot to dim the windows on the Orca’s starboard side. Below her she could see the mountains start to cast shadows, ice and snow on their peaks glimmering in the half-light, and the dull sheen of the Mediterranean so far away it was disappearing over the horizon.

Zenyatta was right, she admitted begrudgingly. She did feel better for just sitting back and taking the world in for a moment.

She took a shower after that, in the Orca’s tiny washroom. The shower cubicle was so small she had to open the door to turn around in it and ended up spraying water all over the dropship’s crew quarters. How on earth someone like Reinhardt was supposed to use the damn thing she had no idea. The idea of the enormous man awkwardly pressed into the tiny space made her snort with laughter. She dried off with a towel someone had left behind and relished the feeling of having clean hair again.

“That’s better,” she said to herself as she shrugged on some clean clothes Genji had left for her. “Don’t look like a tramp now.”

Tracer often talked to herself when she was alone, a habit she’d picked up after the Slipstream incident when hers was the only voice she was able to hear.

“ _Pilot command unconfirmed, please repeat_ ,” the Orca’s AI squawked at her from a nearby speaker. It was a lower-level AI than Athena, not smart enough to know how to modulate its voice to sound human. To Tracer’s ears it sounded like those old text-to-speech software packages her parents had told her computers used to come with at the start of the century.

“Ignore me, ship,” she said, “just ramblin’ again.”

“ _Acknowledged_.”

“What’s our current location?”

The AI spat out a latitude and longitude that, if the atlas Tracer carried in her head was still accurate, put them over central Spain. Tracer nodded. Right on schedule.

“Okay then ship, keep us on that heading. And let me know when we hit France, yeah?”

“ _Acknowledged_.”

With that, Tracer picked a bed in the crew quarters and flopped down onto it. She logged in to her Overwatch account and started pulling up all the evidence on Widowmaker’s escape she’d saved in her private directory, displaying it on a holographic screen projected from the bottom of the bunk above her.

First port of call, the safehouse that went live. After that, everything else the old Overwatch had maintained in Paris. After that, the seedier areas of Paris where people went when they didn’t want to be found. And after that… after that…

Two days of solid work caught up with her. Within minutes she was snoring heavily as the Orca headed north.

 

* * *

 

Paris was huddled under an autumn squall when the Orca reached its outskirts, the towers of the city centre braced against the driving rain and wind. The ship’s AI woke Tracer with an electronic buzz and she stumbled up to the cockpit, blinking sleep out of her eyes.

She had the aircraft fly in a holding pattern while she worked out what to do, then took control back from the AI and made for a small airfield a few miles from the edge of the city. With Talon all around, landing a cargo VTOL with the word ‘Overwatch’ still emblazoned on the hull directly into their crosshairs didn’t seem like the most sensible thing to do.

The airfield was one of those ones that mostly catered to private customers with small business twinjets and sporty anti-grav racing craft. Their air traffic controller took some convincing to let Tracer land the hulking Orca there, but she eventually managed to get clearance by pointing out that, considering the size of the thing she was piloting, there wasn’t really much they could do to stop her.

A man in a raincoat ran out towards her as she settled the Orca down onto the VTOL apron with a gentle _thud_. Tracer watched him come closer through the rain-flecked windows. He had the strut of a man who thinks he’s in charge of more than he is. She noted with idle amusement that he got close enough to read the markings on the hull, then stopped dead in his tracks. It was hard to tell through the rain on the windows but she thought she saw his mouth fall open under his hood.

She opened a side door and went out to meet him, not even bothering to hide the chronal accelerator on her chest that told him exactly who she was.

“What in the-” the man started to splutter as she drew level with him, rain starting to soak into her jacket. He had a thick accent and a thin pencil moustache that had recently come back into fashion. Give him a striped jersey and beret instead of his raincoat and cheap suit and he’d be almost offensively stereotypical, Tracer thought.

“’Ello, love,” she grinned at him, laying it on thick.

“Y-you’re… this is…” the man stammered. The wind was in his face and he had to pause to wipe the rain out of his eyes.

“Yeah?” She had to shout a little to be heard over the hissing of the rain.

“This is not legal!” he managed at last. “You! Overwatch! All of this!” he moaned, jabbing a finger at the Orca. “Get out of here!”

Tracer shrugged, the rain bouncing off her shoulders. “Yeah, sure, I could. But I don’t think you want me to do that, mate.”

“Yes I do!”

“Okay, let’s say I go then. Pop off to some other airfield and touch down there. And the folk there, being the upstanding citizens they are, decide to get on the horn and call it in.” She grinned. “After all, I suppose I am technically a wanted criminal.”

She leaned in, glad for her goggles that kept the rain out of her eyes, letting her glare unblinkingly at the man.

“They send the cops over, they take the Orca. They dissect its memory banks. And the first thing they find is that it just came from here.”

The man went pale.

“You can imagine how that looks. You think whichever gendarme they fob this case off onto will listen to you babbling on about how you’re innocent? After Numbani?”

That damn museum attack had put everyone on alert. Governments around the world had vowed to crack down on the remaining members of Overwatch in its wake, and that was before the debacle in the Channel Tunnel. Tracer had never imagined she might be able to use that to her advantage.

“Article fifteen of the Petras Act expressly forbids aiding or abetting an Overwatch agent, and demands the maximum legal penalty for treason if found guilty,” she added. “Which in France… I can’t remember. Did you guys bring back the death penalty like we did?”

The man nodded wordlessly.

Tracer scowled. There’d been a time when such a thing would have been unthinkable, in France or the UK or anywhere else in Europe. But that time was long ago now. Seemed like everywhere she went the world found another way to get slightly worse.

She put that train of thought aside, it’d do her no good. Instead she refocussed her attention on the man in front of her.

“ _Or_ , I could stay here, pay you double your usual fee for looking after a craft, be gone in a few days and no-one needs to be any the wiser.”

The man looked torn between the trouble he was in just talking to her, and the large sum of money she’d just offered him. His eyes darted from Tracer to the Orca. He looked like he was trying to wish her away by force of sheer desperation. Tracer felt a stab of sympathy for him. Perhaps she’d been too hard.

“Either way,” she said, with an attempt at a reconciliatory grin, “can we at least get out of this rain?”

There at least they had some common ground.

They haggled out a deal as they hurried back to the airfield’s lone single-storey building. Tracer eventually found herself agreeing to triple the upkeep fee and leaving within a week, or else the airfield manager would call the police and face the consequences.

Some of the other staff watched boggle-eyed through the door as they hammered out terms inside the man’s office. To her immense delight, one of them asked her to sign a picture as she left.

 

* * *

 

She caught a monorail into Paris, her few belongings retrieved from the Orca and stuffed into a backpack and a heavy overcoat hiding her chronal accelerator. The rain had eased off but the grey clouds remained, hanging low over the city, so low the newer skyscrapers in La Défense disappeared into their underbellies. Everything glistened with a wet sheen of rainwater.

Tracer got off at a station near the edge of the city centre and stepped out into a neighbourhood of cracked tarmac streets and old tenements. Was there a place like this in every city, she wondered? Sandwiched between the centre and the suburbs, nearly but never quite squeezed out of existence. A place for those down on their luck to stay, and for everyone else to pass over in sealed train carriages and locked cars.

It was no wonder Overwatch had hidden so many of its safehouses in these run-down areas, she realised. In places like these you could hide just about anything if you were smart.

She blew out her cheeks and stood for a moment outside the monorail station, rocking back and forth on her heels, the enormity of the challenge ahead of her sinking in for the first time. Somewhere, out here in a city of almost six million people, was Widowmaker. And Tracer was going to find her with nothing more than a few euros, a map of Paris, and her own two feet.

Or, Widowmaker was a smear of red under the rubble they were only now beginning to dig out of the Channel Tunnel.

Or a cold – colder – corpse on a slab in a Talon morgue.

Or alive, in Talon’s clutches, being reconditioned back into the same woman who’d once gunned down Mondatta with a self-satisfied laugh, who’d slit Gerard Lacroix’s throat from ear to ear, who’d blown out Ana Amari’s eye in a cruel mercy…

Or…

Tracer shook her head, scowled at her reflection in an oily puddle.

_Stop thinking like that, Lena! It ain’t over ‘till it’s over._

She looked up, at the grey skies, at the street signs she couldn’t read, at the people and omnics hurrying this way and that. The sad thing was, she realised with a dim smile, that this wasn’t even the craziest idea she’d had in her twenty six years. She dug around in her backpack and pulled out her map.

_What was it mum always said? Best foot forward._

So she straightened her back, squared her shoulders, and started walking. Down tarmac and cobbles and little side streets that even these neighbourhoods had forgotten. Passing under old brick bridges and newer concrete flyovers, splashing through puddles and grimacing as the water found its way through her shoes.

And at last she came to her first port of call, a crooked, ancient-looking hostel on a corner where two streets met. Tracer scowled up at five storeys of teetering, dirty brick and dingy glass. It made the safehouse back in a London high-rise look good.

She took a moment to shake some water out of her shoe, then pushed the door open and headed inside. The lobby area was dim and cramped, a narrow corridor that led to a flight of rickety wooden stairs. A reception desk took up one wall.

An omnic behind the desk eyed her through telescoping lenses. Tracer had never used this particular safehouse, the one that had mysteriously gone live for a moment a week or so ago, and she wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

“Umm… bonjour,” she said awkwardly as she walked up to the desk and leaned on it.

The omnic made a strange clicking, humming noise but said nothing.

“Avez… avez vous… aw, shite, hold on,” Tracer muttered, dumping her backpack on the floor and rummaging around in it. “Got a phrasebook in ‘ere, hang on…”

The omnic’s strange noise grew louder and its shoulders started shaking. Tracer frowned.

“Je veux louer une chamber…” she read from the phrasebook she’d fished from her bag, then trailed off as the omnic got worse.

“Umm… are you okay? Tu… bien?” Tracer asked, worried the omnic was having a system crash.

Its head jerked up and down a few times – nodding yes? – as it bent over and started trembling violently.

Tracer suddenly realised the omnic was laughing at her.

“Oi!” she snapped. “My French ain’t _that_ bad!”

“ _Mon Dieu, c’est affreux_ ,” the omnic chuckled, shaking its head and recovering a bit. Beneath the monotone drone all omnics had, its voice had a slight French twang to it. “Welcome to Paris, Agent Oxton. I dread to think what we must have done to deserve you.”

A human would have grinned to show they meant nothing by those last words. The omnic had no mouth, though, so instead it reached across the reception desk and shook her hand.

“My reputation precedes me, eh?” Tracer chuckled with a lopsided grin. “Or am I just that noticeable?”

“Both. I recognised your face from the old propaganda posters.” It tapped its skull with a metallic _clink-clink_. “We omnics never forget a face. My name is Jax, by the way. Male pronouns, if you please. It’s an honour to finally meet you, Agent Oxton.”

“Nice to meet ya, Jax. And please, call me Lena. So, you’re Overwatch too?”

“Ex-Overwatch, surely?”

“No such thing, in my experience,” Tracer sighed.

“True enough. Yes, I was – am – a low-level agent. A reservist, I suppose you might call it. I keep a safehouse on the top floor of my hotel, although since you’re here I imagine you already knew that. Unless you’re just here on holiday?”

“I wish,” Tracer huffed. “Nah, strictly business, I’m afraid.”

Jax nodded. “I suspected as much. Would this have something to do the woman in the safehouse?”

Tracer’s heart soared.

“Yes!” she blurted. “I mean, yeah, God, yes, what, she’s still alive, you’re sure?” The words fell from her lips in a torrent. Jax held up his hands as if to bat them away.

“She arrived just under a week ago,” he explained, backing away ever so slightly from Tracer’s over-eager outburst. “Arrived in the dead of night and demanded I give her the safehouse room. I told her that room already had a resident in it – a lie I’ve been telling ever since we got shut down – but she shoved a gun in my face and demanded I give it to her anyway.”

Jax shrugged as if to say _what can you do?_

“I gave her the room. Seemed to be the sensible option. And then, the very next day, she left. Just like that.”

Tracer couldn’t contain her excitement. “And this bird, what’d she look like?”

“I didn’t get a good look at her. She kept her head covered and, like I say, it was dark.” Jax sighed. “My night vision isn’t what it used to be. But there was something odd about her skin. And,” he added as an afterthought, “her French was a lot better than yours.”

Tracer rummaged in her backpack once more, pulled out her phone. “Is this her?” she asked, calling up a picture of Amélie Lacroix and pushing the phone across the reception desk towards him.

Jax’s eyes whirred as he focussed in on it. “Possibly. I don’t think her skin was that colour, though.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about that. She’s… not who she used to be.”

“Who _is_ she?”

“You know the name Widowmaker?”

“No. Isn’t that a kind of spider?”

“Amélie Lacroix?”

“No… wait. As in Gérard Lacroix?”

Tracer sighed miserably. “Yup.”

“But… isn’t he dead? Him and his wife? That’s what they told me.”

“Gérard’s dead, yeah. The woman I’m looking for, the one who took the room – she used to be his wife.” Tracer thought for a moment. “Might be again now. I dunno.”

Jax’s lenses narrowed in an approximation of a confused squint. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Long story.”

“Isn’t it always? That still doesn’t explain why she turned up and shoved a gun in my face. If she was Gérard’s wife, I’d have gladly let her in. Although I might have asked her to explain the resurrection first. And the name change.”

“Name change?”

Jax reached beneath the desk and pulled out a ledger. “If the strange behaviour and the gun weren’t enough to tip me off, the name she gave definitely was.” He opened it and pointed to an entry at the bottom of a short list. “I would have believed many names, but _not_ this one.”

There beneath his finger: a date, a room number, and a name: Lena Oxton.

Tracer snorted with astonished laughter. There was a message if ever she’d read one. A dim memory from her time under Angela’s anaesthetics, just after the train crash, bubbled up from the back of her mind: _come find me, chérie_.

A wave of relief so strong it made her legs feel weak washed over her. She beamed.

“She’s alive,” she said to no-one in particular. “Bloody hell, love, you made it.”

Jax rattled in confusion.

Tracer took a step back, ran a hand through her hair, grinned hugely.

“This is the best news I’ve had all week,” she said. “I don’t suppose she’s said where she was going?”

“No. And I did ask,” Jax replied.

“Guess I’m going door to door, then,” Tracer muttered.

“Why? What’s so important about this woman?”

Tracer grimaced. “It really is a long story, Jax.”

Jax glanced around at the empty hostel lobby. “I do have the time.”

“Yeah, but I sorta don’t. And more importantly, neither does she. Sorry love, you know how it goes. Time’s against us, again. Even me,” she added, tapping at the part of her overcoat that hid her chronal accelerator.

Jax nodded. “Well, any assistance I can render…”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“Good.”

Tracer slung her backpack over her shoulder. “Right, so, here’s the situation: I’ve got about a week to find this woman. Her name’s Widowmaker, by the way – used to be Amélie Lacroix, but best if we don’t go there. I’ve got no resources, no real plan, no backup… and I could really use a place to stay.”

“Say no more,” Jax chuckled. He stood, went to the racks of keys behind the reception desk and picked one which he tossed to Tracer. She caught it in one hand with a flourish.

“I hope you’ll enjoy your stay with us, Ms Oxton. Top floor, on your right,” he said, and sighed happily. “This feels rather like old times, doesn’t it?”

Tracer thanked him for the keys and started towards the rickety wooden stairs. She had just put her foot on the first stair when Jax called out to her down the corridor.

“Agent Oxton! Ah… Lena. So...” he paused.

“Yeah?” Tracer called back.

“So it really is true? What they’re saying about the recall? That Overwatch is back? I hadn’t dared hope…”

Tracer thought about that for a moment.

“Nah, not really.”

Jax sagged.

“Just a bunch of well-wishers tryin’ to live up to the name.”

It might have been a trick of the light, but the blue lights in Jax’s chassis suddenly seemed to glow brighter.

 

* * *

 

Tracer took the stairs two at a time, all the way up to the fifth floor. The door on her right opened with the key she’d been given.

The safehouse was a single room, bed against one wall, sink against the other, tiny walk-in washroom tucked into an alcove. A grimy window looked out onto the cobbled street below. Tracer dumped her backpack in a corner and started to poke around, looking for any trace Widowmaker had left in her wake.

After half an hour of turning the tiny room upside down, all she had found was a burnt-out cigarette end that could have been anyone’s. She sat down in the mess she’d made of the room and exhaled slowly.

_Come on Lena, there’s something you’re missing.  
_

She turns up in the dead of night. Demands a room. Demands _this_ room.

How did she know this was a safehouse? She had no way to trawl Overwatch records. And Talon clearly didn’t know about this place, or they’d already have stormed it.

Perhaps Widowmaker didn’t know this place existed. Perhaps Amélie Lacroix remembered it from her days hiding out, when Talon had made another attempt at Gérard’s life and Overwatch needed somewhere safe to keep her for a day or two.

So was it Widowmaker drawing on Lacroix’s memories, or Lacroix herself? Tracer gnawed on a thumbnail as she mulled that over. She wasn’t sure which answer to that question she’d prefer. Well, that was a lie. She knew which she’d _prefer_. She just didn’t know what to do if it turned out to be the other.

In the dead of night, she had demanded this room, and was gone by the next day.

So she’d only needed this place overnight. A place to hole up? Obviously. But why leave?

Inspiration hit her in a flash. She jumped to her feet and hurried over to the washroom, yanked open the small medicine cabinet that hung on the wall. Inside was a tube of Angela’s nanobiotics, like there was in every Overwatch safehouse still worth the name. She’d seen the canister the first time she’d searched the room and thought nothing of it.

Tracer picked up the canister, unscrewed the top. The sterile seal over the needle was broken. An indicator on the tube’s side was red.

It had been used. Widowmaker (Lacroix?) had been wounded. She’d come here to patch herself up.

“Aw, hell, love,” Tracer muttered. “What the hell’ve you gotten yourself into?”

There was a knock at the door.

“Yeah?” she called out.

“Lena, it’s Jax,” she heard him call from the other side of the wood. “There’s someone on the phone for you downstairs.”

Tracer span round. “Who?”

“A very gruff man with a very recognisable voice, who asked me to call him ‘Soldier 76’.”

And her heart sank again.

“Tell him I’m busy,” she said, sticking her head round the door.

“If you say so,” Jax shrugged. “This is turning into quite a day, might I just add. Nothing for five years, then two heroes of Overwatch get in touch within half an hour of each other.” He trundled off down the stairs.

Tracer stepped back into the room and tried to get her thoughts in order. Widowmaker was hurt. Or rather, had been hurt. After a dose of Angela’s med-tech she was probably fine now, but that wasn’t much comfort. Talon must have been closer on her heels than she’d thought.

_Against the clock again_ , she thought bitterly as she stuffed a few things into her backpack, called up a list of Overwatch safehouses in Paris from Athena on her phone, and clattered out of her room. She hurried down the stairs, past the reception desk where Jax was quietly but firmly remonstrating with someone on the other end of a phone line, and out into the cool air of the afternoon.

_Hang in there love. Wherever the hell you are._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Jax' is a little reference to a book called 'The Mechanical' by Ian Tregillis which you should all give a go if you can.  
> Also, can you tell I hadn't really planned much of this out in advance? That title's looking more out-of-date with every passing chapter. Wonder where these two will end up next...


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I got bitten by the writing bug so here's another chapter! This one even has plot in it!

For four days Tracer criss-crossed Paris, braving autumn showers and the first chilly winds of winter, sloshing through puddles lurking by the roadsides and drifts of dead leaves that squelched underfoot. Four days on metros, in taxis, on foot and thumbing rides from kindly strangers, with her hair slicked down to hide its distinctive peak and a baggy overcoat to hide her chronal accelerator.

On the first day she had checked the safehouses. All empty. Dotted around the city, from shabby apartments to luxury flats with ten years’ rent pre-paid, every last one of them was as quiet and empty as a tomb. Tracer visited every last one, dreamt up elaborate excuses for needing to visit them and parroted them in stilted French to suspicious landlords and bored receptionists. She quickly realised that people like Jax were a rarity – most had no idea they had an Overwatch safehouse on their property. Probably safer that way, Tracer realised. The fewer people who know a secret, the safer it is.

None of the safehouses had been used. Their medical syringes were all intact, there was a layer of dust on every horizontal surface. Not even a cigarette end that Tracer could desperately interpret as evidence.

So at the end of the first day she’d trudged back to Jax in low spirits and collapsed exhausted into bed, not bothering with something to eat or even to take her clothes off.

For the next three days she broadened her net. She went practically door-to-door in the rougher neighbourhoods of Paris, staking out tenements and run-down apartments and old housing complexes that the government had long since forgotten about. All that got her was a pair of empty hands and a couple of scrapes with a few thugs and lowlifes who thought the woman with a foreign accent would be an easy target.

By the time she’d left the third group of men bleeding in the gutter she decided to call it quits. And besides, any more of this and someone important might notice her.

And again she tramped back to Jax’s safehouse, brushing off his worried questions, and slumped onto the bed. It was awful. Draw a circle around her just five short miles in diameter and Widowmaker was in there, somewhere, alone and fighting for her life. And Tracer was so close to her but might as well have been on the moon for all the good she was doing.

Tracer always tried to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Now it looked like she’d be doing the exact opposite. On that night she came as close to crying as she ever had since coming back from the Slipstream.

With her knees hugged to her chest, her cramped room lit only by the glow from her chest, she screwed her eyes up and tried not to let it all get too much for her. _We got so close, love, I can’t lose you now…  
_

A knock on the door.

“Ahem… Agent- ah, Lena?” she heard Jax’s voice on the other side. He made a strange barking noise that was his attempt to simulate an awkward cough without vocal cords.

“What?”

“I made some soup.”

Despite her gloom, Lena choked out a little giggle at the ridiculousness of the line.

“Huh? Why?”

Another awkward not-cough. “I wasn’t sure when you last ate. I’m afraid my knowledge of human food is… limited. But I can make soup.”

Tracer got to her feet, quickly dried her eyes, and opened the door with as close to a cheerful face as she could muster. Jax was stood there in the dim light of the top floor’s dingy bulb, a chipped and steaming bowl in his hands.

“Thanks, love,” she said tiredly as Jaz pressed the bowl into her hands and passed her a spoon.

She inspected the bowl. A few grey chunks of meat floated in a watery puddle and a chunk of stale bread sat in it like an old boat beached at low tide. “Umm… what’s this?”

“Garbure,” Jax said. “Ham soup, to you English.”

Tracer smiled. It smelled surprisingly good, given its appearance. “You didn’t strike me as a chef, Jax.”

The omnic shifted awkwardly. “I’m not. It’s the only human dish I know how to make.”

A frown. “Why’s that?”

“It was popular amongst the soldiers, back in Gascony.”

Gascony. South-west France, where the French Omnium had been, vomiting war omnics out into both France and Spain. The site of some of the most brutal fighting in Europe, towards the end of the Crisis.

“You were in the war?” Tracer asked, surprised. “Didn’t think they’d let smart machines like you fight alongside the troops.”

Jax hung his head. “They didn’t. I was on the other side.”

Tracer gave a little ‘ah’.

“Infiltration unit, designed to sneak behind enemy lines disguised as some dumb pre-Omnica Corporation droid. The kind that still followed human orders. I worked with a battalion cook for three weeks, getting to know the forces arrayed against us. Then I slit half their throats one night and went back to my side.”

He made a mournful noise.

“The cook had a recipe scrawled on the back of an old letter. It was the first time I’d ever seen paper in my existence. For some reason, when I left them, I took it with me. I’ve never worked out why.”

Tracer kept quiet, but she could think of a reason. Same reason she was out here, in a way.

“Later I was uploaded into this chassis,” Jax continued, gesturing to his humanoid body, “and prepared for another mission. But the Omnium was taken out before I could be deployed. And so here I am,” he finished.

For a moment there was an awkward silence, neither knowing quite what to say.

“At least _those_ days are over,” Tracer offered at last.

“At least,” Jax agreed. “I would say ‘never again’, but events in Russia are putting the lie to that, aren’t they?”

Tracer sighed.

“I’m sorry,” Jax suddenly said, shaking his head with a quiet whine of motors. “You look like you’ve had a long day. And here I am, depressing you with all this.”

“Don’t you dare apologise for talking to me, love,” Tracer scowled, and gave him a gentle punch on his upper arm with her free hand. Jax trembled a little, the omnic equivalent of a happy smile, and pointed at the steaming bowl in Tracer’s other hand.

“Eat the soup,” he commanded. “You’ll feel better with some food in you.” He paused. “I think,” he added lamely.

Tracer giggled. “Aye aye, sir,” she grinned.

She closed the door as he turned and headed back down the stairs. A few minutes later she set an empty bowl down on the floor and lay back in her bed, idly tracing the pattern of cracks in the ceiling in the dim blue glow from her accelerator.

There had to be away to find Widowmaker, she decided. She just needed some new ideas.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Tracer finally looked at her phone.

Ten missed calls, six new emails, dozens of unread messages.

She scrolled through them idly, wondering who to reply to first, until she saw an email from Zenyatta. The subject line read: _Important – Lena, please read this one first_.

With a raised eyebrow she opened it.

_Dear Lena  
_

_I can hear 76 shouting into your answerphone from across the base so I will assume you are still not responding to calls. I suppose you are not answering due to time constraints, or an unwillingness to have to face us all begging you to return. I make no judgements. I just ask you to bear in mind that, from our end, there is no clear difference between someone ignoring our messages and someone who has been captured by Talon. So please, if the worst has not come to pass, consider giving us a signal and putting us at least somewhat at ease.  
_

_Everyone has sent you their messages but hopefully this is the first one you are reading. Forgive my selfishness, but I wished my words to be the first to reach your eyes, as I am at least partially responsible for your absence.  
_

_All I say is: keep looking, if you are able. No matter what the others say, no matter whether the woman you pursue now answers to Widowmaker or to Lacroix. I know some here in Gibraltar believe you to be on a fool’s errand, but always remember that the outcome is never preordained.  
_

_P.S. Genji wishes you well.  
_

Tracer laughed. “Classic Zenyatta,” she murmured to her empty room.

She sent him a quick message back, letting him know she was okay but hadn’t had any success yet, and then turned to her other messages.

Winston wanted her back as soon as possible, begging her to get out of Paris before Talon’s net closed – but at the same time, if she _did_ find Widowmaker, then for God’s sake get her home too.

Angela was clearly torn between potentially losing Tracer and potentially getting Widowmaker – who she was still absent-mindedly calling Amélie – back at long last. Fareeha hadn’t sent her anything but Angela said she was taking Tracer’s departure badly. “ _She thinks this is all her fault, because she didn’t save you both on the train_ ,” Angela’s email explained.

Tracer made a point to send something cheerful to Fareeha once she read that.

Soldier 76 was having a go at her for absconding with Overwatch property, although Tracer thought she detected a hint of worry behind his brusque messages. _Old habits die hard, eh, Morrison?_ Reinhardt was eager to see her taking the fight back to Talon, Lucio and Mei were warning her to be careful. Hana, in her own inimitable way, was urging her to go get her ‘creepy murder girlfriend’. McCree was asking if he could have her boxes of Yorkshire tea if she didn’t come back.

 _Trying to impress Hanzo again? Cos I don’t think they drink the same kind of tea in Japan…_ she sent back to him.

 _It was worth a shot_ , came the response, worryingly quick. Tracer buried her head in her hands. Poor Jesse really was quite hopeless when it came to this sort of thing.

And there, buried at the bottom of her inbox, a message from someone she’d not expected: Ana Amari.

_Lena  
_

_You have to do what you think is right. Now and always._

_Ana  
_

Well wasn’t that something to chew on? Tracer tapped her phone against her teeth for a second, deep in thought.

And then, as if moving of their own accord, her fingers punched in a number and hit ‘dial’. It wasn’t a number she’d planned on calling. It certainly wasn’t the first person she wanted to talk to, and probably the last she expected to help her.

 

* * *

 

_Establishing connection, please hold…  
_

“Tracer?”

“Heya, 76. Umm… how’s things?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer. Bring back our last working VTOL, then we’ll talk.”

“Last working… what?”

An exasperated sigh. “I guess Genji didn’t mention where he got all the fuel cells to refuel your Orca from, then?”

“No…”

“The rest of our fleet. What’s left of it. He claims no-one told him Orcas have global range and you don’t need to fill one up for a sub-continental journey. So he took every last _goddamned_ fuel cell we had. We can’t even run the windshield wipers on them now.”

Tracer tried very hard to stifle a laugh. “I thought he’d given me a bit much.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” 76 growled. “So until you come back, Overwatch is officially grounded,” he continued. “So get back. _Now_.”

“That an order?”

“Yes.”

“Bollocks.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I said, bollocks.”

There was an icy silence from 76’s end of the line.

“Jesse used to nick nukes from the US army. Hanzo used to run a criminal empire. Hell, you’ve been living off the grid for years, 76! You trying to tell me between you, you can’t scrounge up a few fuel cells from some shady contacts?”

“That’s not-”

“Just sounds like an excuse to me.”

Another silence.

“So why are you calling?” 76 asked at last. “I hope you’ve got something to show for all this.”

Now it was Tracer’s turn to be on the back foot. “Not… exactly…”

“Oh, fantastic.”

“Don’t give me that, 76, you try and finding someone who doesn’t want to be found in a city of six million!”

“So where have you looked?”

“Everywhere I can! I checked all our old safehouses, I checked the seedier parts of town, places where people go to hide, I couldn’t find her anywhere.”

“Is that all?”

“Oh for… you try doing more in four days!”

76 was quiet for a moment. Tracer heard a faint tapping sound on the other end of the line. Probably him drumming his fingers on the desk, she realised. Another of Morrison’s habits he hadn’t bothered to hide.

“Why did you check those places?” he asked eventually.

“Where else would I look? Where else would someone go to hide?”

“There’s your problem.”

“What?”

76 muttered something that sounded suspiciously like _kids these days_. “Hide. You’ve assumed she’s hiding.”

“Well of course she is! Talon’s breathing down her neck!”

“So why would she hide?”

Tracer squinted at her phone like she might be able to see 76 through it if she found the right angle.

“Huh?”

“You said it yourself. Talon’s after her. Must be close now. She knows the end’s coming. You think she’s going to hole up, wait for the end? Maybe. Or she could attack, take the fight to them. One last blaze of glory for the world to remember her by.”

Tracer felt something cold crawl down her spine.

“You think…”

“It’s what I would do,” 76 said simply. “No backup, no escape route, enemies on all sides? I wouldn’t go quietly.”

“Oh, no…” Tracer croaked.

“And until she knows you’re looking for her, you’ll never find her. Because you’re looking in all the wrong places.” He sighed. “Fine. You want my advice? Go straight at Talon. One way or another, that’s where you’ll find her.”

And with that, he hung up.

Tracer was left sat on her bed, stunned, her mouth hanging open, her mind whirling.

After a moment her phone pinged. One new message from: Soldier 76.

_Lena  
_

_Attached is all the intel on Talon in France I was able to dig up during my time going after them. Might be something useful in there. Good luck.  
_

_76  
_

_PS: Don’t tell Winston I did this. I’ve got a reputation as a heartless bastard to keep up.  
_

Tracer opened the attached files. Names, addresses, occupations. Secret ranks and hidden server directories. Passwords and timetables. All she needed.

She checked her watch – still early morning, she had time, just – and dialled another number.

“Athena? Hi, love. You up for a bit more digging?”

 

* * *

 

Sunset washed the room golden-red through the floor-to-ceiling windows, glinted off the metal trimmings of the apartment’s modern furnishings, tastefully picked out the blood spatters on the far wall. Made them seem like part of the decoration. The slumped corpse beneath them looked like it was sunbathing in the evening glow.

Up close it wasn’t so pretty. The dead woman on the floor had the livid red welt of a garrotte wire around her neck and the back of her head was a mash of dried blood and spilled brains. Plus, at two days dead, she was starting to smell.

Not that Widowmaker cared.

This apartment in an upscale Paris tower was a good enough bolt hole for a few days. Its previous owner, a member of a French media conglomerate and secret Talon operative, had been a minor inconvenience at best. Widowmaker doubted the other woman had ever fought in her life. She had been pathetically easy to overpower and dispatch. And Talon would never think to look for her in one of their own nests.

It would have made more sense to stay in that Overwatch safehouse than risk discovery here. But she had memories of that place from long before, and couldn’t stand the idea of spending her last days surrounded by the ghosts of her past.

She sat at a coffee table that cost more than some people made in a year and cleaned her rifle. To one side, a laptop the apartment’s previous owner hadn’t managed to lock before she’d burst in through the front door lay open, telling her all sorts of secrets.

Once she was done she clicked her gun back together, barrel and chamber, magazine and stock, tested the action, checked the servos that turned it from long-range to short-range and back again in an instant.

Out through the windows, over the rooftops of Paris, a VTOL was briefly silhouetted against the setting sun. A black outline on a disc of orange. Red anti-gravs matched the sunset.

Blood-red lenses watched it go, oblivious that the woman it was looking for had already found it.

Once it was out of sight Widowmaker stood, checked one last thing on the laptop. Checked her rifle too, just to be sure.

For a moment her mind flashed to thoughts of cheerful laughter, an unbearable accent, a soft blue glow and gentle hands on her shoulders. But she didn’t dwell. It didn’t pay to linger on what you could not have.

Amélie Lacroix had died on a Talon operating slab. Widowmaker had died in the Channel Tunnel. Whoever was left walked out of the apartment, ready to die one last time.

 

* * *

 

“ _Even by your standards, this is a logical leap, Lena,_ ” Athena said, injecting an extra dose of exasperation into her synthesised voice.

“You got any better ideas, love?” Tracer said into the phone pressed against her ear. And then, “yeah, right here, that’s great,” to the man driving her taxi.

“ _Continue your search in a more logical fashion?_ ”

“Nuts to that, I’ve only got a day or two more until that stuffy little fart at the airfield brings the coppers down on my head.”

Tracer suddenly was glad the cab driver could barely speak English. _Way to tell the world, Lena_ , she scolded herself.

There was a bump as the cab pulled up to the kerb. Keeping the phone with Athena on it pressed to her ear, Tracer leaned forward. “How much do I owe you, mate?”

The cabbie’s French wasn’t much better than hers. “Quatorze euro,” he said, pointing to the meter.

“Here, keep the change.”

“Merci, madame.”

Tracer clambered out of the cab and stood on the sidewalk, checking her appearance in a shop window.

“ _If this doesn’t work, Talon’s going to know exactly where you are,_ ” Athena protested in her ear.

“But if it does work, they’ll never know what hit ‘em,” Tracer countered. “Alright, love, I gotta go now. Wish me luck!”

An electronic sigh buzzed down the phone line. “ _Good luck, Lena._ ”

Tracer killed the call, pocketed her phone, and started down the street. Around her, the crowds of late-night Paris swirled and jostled. The skyscrapers loomed above her, jabbing up at the rainclouds that had circled round and come back for another try.

“Here goes nothin’” she muttered.

 

* * *

 

The restaurant catered only to the cream of Parisian society. It was an exclusiveness born of expense – a meal here would send all but the most wealthy slinking for the exit with cartoon moths coming from their wallet. Its chefs were the finest from all around the world, the views out over the Seine from its rooftop terrace were famous. Here you could find tycoons and movie stars, politicians and presidents, foreign ambassadors and high-flying reporters. When the people who ate here spoke, all of France listened.

Tonight, a man and a woman sat a table to one side of the terrace and discussed things in hushed tones. Most of the other customers paid them no mind, and that suited them just fine. In their line of work it was better to go unnoticed. They could pass for business tycoons, upper-level politicians, decorated generals and semi-famous actors all at once. In the social circles they moved in that made them practically invisible. Which was how Talon preferred it.

“Still no luck with Widowmaker, then,” the woman said, sipping from a glass of wine that was older than half the buildings around them. It was a statement, not a question.

“She cannot evade us for much longer,” the man replied, setting down his knife and fork and dabbing his lips with his napkin. “My people are kicking down doors and asking questions. Sooner or later, we’ll find her.”

“Assuming she is even still in the city.”

“Where else would she go? No-one leaves Paris now without us knowing. And none of the other cities are big enough to hide her anyway.”

The woman frowned. Evidently she did not agree.

“No,” the man continued, with an air of supreme confidence, “we’ll find her. After that, it’s not up to us what happens to her.”

“Hmmm.”

“The bosses want her alive, sure. They want their weapon back.”

“Do you think that is likely?”

“I don’t think she’ll surrender willingly, if that’s what you mean,” the man chuckled. “Just ask poor Reaper.”

The woman smiled thinly. “I hear he’s doing well these days.”

“Frothing at the damn mouth. Wants to break her in half with his bare hands after the Channel Tunnel.”

“I still don’t understand how he survived the crash.”

“With that man, you don’t ask and you pray you never learn.”

“True.”

They ate in silence for a moment.

“Suppose,” the woman said after a moment, putting her cutlery down, “that we catch her.”

“Yes?”

“Alive.”

“Yes?”

“Must we hand her over to the higher-ups?”

The man arched an eyebrow.

“Suppose instead, we keep her,” the woman continued. “Do we have the resources to perform a reconditioning of our own?”

The other eyebrow joined the first.

“I’m told the procedure is a deceptively simple one. They did all the hard work when they built her. Now it’s more an issue of… maintenance.”

“What you’re suggesting…” the man began.

“Is a mere hypothetical, you understand.”

“Of course.”

“Could it be done?”

The man rubbed his jaw in thought. “Perhaps,” he said at last. He nodded with some conviction. “Perhaps.”

“It would be a fantastic asset, no? A ‘rogue’ assassin. The perfect cover story.” She leaned in. “And you know as well as I do that shake-ups are coming within the organisation. Failures like those in England and Nigeria will not be tolerated much longer. She would give us a certain _leverage_.”

The man furrowed his brow, weighing the risks in his head.

Then the woman’s eyes snapped up. “What do you want?” she demanded of someone the man had to turn to look at.

“Begging your pardon, monsieur and madame,” a waiter in a pristine uniform said with a stiff bow. “But there is a lady at the front door who says she is here at your invitation.”

The man scoffed. “We invited no-one. Send her away.”

The woman held up a hand. “Wait. Did she give a name?”

“She did, madame: Amélie Lacroix.”

From the looks the poor waiter received, he wondered whether he’d still have his job – or his neck – by the end of the night.

“Would you give us a moment?” the woman asked with a sweet voice and eyes like daggers.

The waiter retreated.

“This has to be a joke,” she hissed when he was out of earshot.

“Perhaps. All I know is no-one with an intent to kill gives their name at the door.”

“They’ll write that on your tombstone,” the woman muttered.

“Don’t be so pessimistic. We’re quite safe here.” He pointed at a few rooftops around them. “I took the precaution of setting up snipers to keep an eye on us. Even I’m not so foolhardy as to take dinner with an assassin on the loose, without erecting some safeguards.”

He motioned the waiter back over. “Let her in, then.” The waiter scurried off. “And who knows?” he added, turning back to his companion, “maybe this will solve one of our little problems.”

In a moment the waiter had returned, an unfamiliar figure strutting behind him. One neither of them immediately recognised.

“Who…?”

“That’s not…”

“Hello, guys,” said Tracer, grinning down at the two Talon agents.

 

* * *

 

Grapple up to the rooftop, land silently, back to an old brick chimney. Goggles down, infra-vision up. Thermal heat through the brickwork. Another guard. Meant she was getting closer.

Night-times spent on city skylines seemed to be all she knew these days.

A side-step, a dodge, a blow with the edge of her hand and the guard lay crumpled on the floor, trying to breathe through a broken windpipe.

There, across the curve of the river, the restaurant terrace glowed.

 

* * *

 

“You are… not who we were expecting,” the woman spluttered as Tracer pulled up a chair and plonked herself down on the other side of the table from them.

“Nevertheless, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms Oxton,” the man said, smooth as oil. “Or would you prefer Tracer?”

Tracer shrugged, looked at the menu, couldn’t read any of it.

“I’ll have that one,” she said, pointing out a random item to the waiter who was hovering nearby with a look of tempered disgust on his face. “And a glass of the house red.”

The waiter looked like he was about to vomit at the scruffy English girl he was now catering too, but he managed a stiff bow and stalked off.

“I don’t even like wine,” Tracer admitted to the other two. “Just wanted rid of the guy.”

“Expertly handled,” the woman said, in a tone that could hardly have been more sarcastic.

“Oi! That’s no way to talk to a potential new employee,” Tracer sniffed. “I’ve got worker’s rights, I have.”

That got their attention alright.

“Employee?” the man asked with a raised eyebrow. It looked to Tracer like he practiced the gesture in front of a mirror when no-one was watching.

“Yeah.”

The woman pinched the bridge of her nose. “I am sorry, _what_?”

 

* * *

 

On her stomach, rifle braced against her shoulder, she sighted in. Man and woman, man with his back to her, woman just visible over his shoulder.

The waiter came up, was sent away. They talked. Looked nervous. Signalled for the waiter again, then sent him away. Again.

Windspeed, 5 kilometres per hour, south-south-west. Bullet drop, accounted for.

Waiter came back.

Coriolis, accounted for.

Someone following behind him. Could complicate matters. Who?

The other person came into focus. And the world dropped out from under her.

 

* * *

 

“You’re gonna find her eventually. Overwatch are tryin’ too but we ain’t got the funds, we ain’t got the resources. You’re gonna get to her first. That’s just how it is.”

The man smiled cockily. “As you say.”

“And, quite frankly, I’m _fucking_ sick of Overwatch.”

A few heads at nearby tables turned at the too-loud swear. The woman grimaced.

Tracer leaned forward and hissed, “Overwatch used to stand for somethin’. Used to be we got stuff _done_. Yeah, messily sometimes, but we got results, we made the world change. Now? It’s a joke. A bunch of cosplay enthusiasts sitting in an old Watchpoint and moaning about how they can’t save everyone anymore. You know I had to steal a plane to get here? The best assassin in the world’s up for grabs here in Paris and they wanted me to fly economy class!”

The two Talon agents watched her like hawks. No doubt plotting a mile a minute.

“So here’s the deal: I help you with Widowmaker. After the time we spent together in London, she trusts me. She won’t surrender to you, she’ll go down fightin’ and take a lot of you with her, and that’s just wasted resources all round, right? But if she sees me? She’ll do the right thing.”

 _I hope to God she’ll do the right thing_ , Tracer thought.

“And in return?” the woman asked.

“Simple. In return I get to work for you. Consider a live Widowmaker my entry fee.”

There was a pause. Then the man laughed quietly. “Ms Oxton, forgive me. I find all this rather difficult to believe.”

 

* * *

 

_What is she doing here? Why is she talking to them? What in hell’s name is going on?_

Her mind raced but her body remained calm. Like it had been designed to. Her heartbeat barely increased.

And her finger tightened on the trigger, even as her aim shifted back and forth.

 

* * *

 

“You developed something of a… reputation? At Overwatch,” the man continued with a sneer. “And I find it hard to reconcile the Oxton we spent so many years fighting, with the one who sits before me now and says she wants to defect.”

Tracer shrugged. “That’s your problem, not mine.”

“Not if what you say is true.”

“Are we safe out here?” Tracer suddenly asked, looking around. “Y’know, with a famed sniper on the loose I’m surprised you guys are eating out here in the open air. Figured a concrete bunker might have been the safer option.”

The woman glanced at her companion with a look that said _see?_ He just smirked.

“We’re quite secure. My soldiers have seen to that.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“You can ask them yourself.”

He tapped a hidden earpiece. “Captain, come in.”

 

* * *

 

“ _Captain, come in, over._ ”

The corpse behind Widowmaker squawked with radio chatter. _Mon Dieu_ , she thought, _it’s just like last time_.

In a split second, she pushed aside her doubts, and aimed…

“ _Captain…? Do you copy?_ ”

_Trop lent, l'ami.  
_

Waited for the pause between heartbeats…

 

* * *

 

Nothing but silence on the radio, from the man’s expression. Tracer grinned.

“Oh dear,” she said. “Your man stepped out for a fag break or something?”

The first creases of worry started to mar the Talon agents’ faces.

“And you’re right, love, you’re absolutely right. Didn’t really sound like me, did it?” She sighed. “Never was the world’s best actress.”

She leaned in conspiratorially. “Between you an’ me, I just wanted to keep you talking.”

The man was trying other radio channels. All dead.

“After all, how do you find the world’s best assassin? You go find her targets.”

There was genuine fear in the agents’ expressions now.

“Betcha never thought she’d come find you instead, eh, guys? Don’t feel bad, took me forever to work it out too.”

Tracer made a gun with her fingers and pointed it at the other two with a savage smile.

“Seeya around.”

She pretended to fire.

And the agents’ heads burst with an awful wet ripping sound.

A second later Tracer heard the _crack_ of a rifle, echoing out across the river. The man toppled forward and splashed down into his food with a spray of blood and sauce. Tracer caught a glimpse of his brains peeping out of the hole in his head. On the other side of the table the woman’s hands jerked up towards her face, as if to ward off the bullet that had already killed her. She toppled backwards with a _crash_ and lay still.

There was a horrified silence in the restaurant for a second. Then the screams began.

As the rest of the clientele scrambled for the exit, trampling each other in their desperate rush to escape, Tracer took a rough guess at where the bullet had come from and gave a little boy-scout salute in that direction.

_Here I am, love. Came back for ya.  
_

With that she got to her feet, turned and _one-two-three_ blinked away, across the rooftops of Paris, back towards the safehouse.

 

* * *

 

She’d learned her lesson from London and done the job properly this time. All security forces neutralised before the kill. No booted feet pounded across the slates towards her this time. Widowmaker was all alone on her rooftop.

 _Non._ Not all alone. Not anymore.

There was someone out there with her.

Hope welling in her chest for the first time she could remember, Widowmaker fired her grapple gun and hurtled off into the darkness.

 

* * *

 

Tracer got back to the safehouse as fast as she could, blinking right up to the front door before shoving it open.

It took her a few minutes to find the light switch in the lobby. When she flicked it on she was treated to the unnerving sight of Jax sat stock-still behind the reception desk, staring intently at her with whirring lenses.

“Jesus, Jax!” she said. “You nearly gave me a heart attack! What’re you doing there?”

“Waiting for you, Agent Oxton. Making sure you got back here safely.”

“Ah, I’m fine. Listen-”

“There’s blood on you.”

“Is there?” Tracer rubbed at her face and her palm came away pink and sticky. “Urgh. Don’t worry, it ain’t mine.”

Jax stood up jerkily and walked around the desk towards her.

“Are you injured?”

“What? Nah, I said it ain’t mine.”

“Let me see.”

Something about the way he said it made Tracer take a step back.

“Jax, I’m fine. Honest! But listen, I gotta tell ya-”

He came closer. Tracer frowned.

“Jax, are you okay?”

“P-perfectly fine.”

Tracer had never heard an Omnic stutter before.

“Jax…?”

His chassis was an old model, not festooned with diodes and lights like newer omnics. Only a couple of lights glowed here and there, peeping out between joints in his plastic carapace.

And, as Tracer suddenly noticed with a jolt of horror, they glowed red, not blue.

Jax jerked to a halt just in front of her, his hands trembling, his whole body shuddering.

For a moment his lights flicked blue.

“ _L-Lena, r-run!_ ” he screeched.

Red came back. He lunged for her. On instinct Tracer rewound.

She spiralled back through time, blasted backwards through the front door in a cloud of splinters and broken glass. Her feet hit cobblestones outside. Jax landed where she had been moments ago and split the air with a brutal hammer blow from his fists.

“What the-” Tracer managed to yell, but then shadows moved in her peripheral vision and booted feet clattered. She lashed out, caught something that doubled up with an _oof!_ Inside Jax was standing back up, preparing himself for another attack. With a flick of her forearms her pistols were in her hands and she fired madly at something else she could barely see in the dark.

Something heavy clubbed her on the back of the head and she saw stars. Toppled to her knees with the taste of blood in her mouth. Omnic feet marched stiffly into her vision and another blow smashed into her head. She crumpled to the ground, cracking her head on the hard cobbles, dazed and bleeding. Her guns clattered away across the stone.

Above her a merc in a white mask with glowing red lenses aimed his rifle at her. An underslung taser sparked and crackled.

Another white mask loomed in her vision, angular and cruel. Heavy boots and the creak of leather. The familiar _clack-clack_ of shotguns.

“ _We really must stop meeting like this, Tracer_.”

She tried to reach for her pistols but a boot sole ground her hand into the cobbles. The taser above her flared bright white, and then she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Widowmaker there going for a double kill. And once again, Reaper Ruins Everything. Hope you liked it!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bloody hell this took forever. Life just kept getting in the way! But it's done now, I hope you like it!

Hands grabbed her shoulders and ankles. Metal bit into her wrists. Battered and bleeding, clinging to consciousness by the tips of her fingers, Tracer barely noticed.

An engine roared nearby, she heard the crackle of anti-gravs. A white rectangle opened up in the darkness and she was hauled towards it.

She tried to blink away, couldn’t manage it, couldn’t find the strength. Her accelerator whined on her chest.

Something nearby hissed in frustration.

“ _We need to get that damn thing off her._ ”

She was thrown forward into the light. Her head hit metal, and it all went black.

 

* * *

 

Unconscious on a metal floor, she half-dreamed, half-remembered.

White lights above her, suspended on an anglepoise arm that hovered over like an inquisitive bird. Cold metal beneath her thin cotton t-shirt and shorts. The reassuring weight of her accelerator sat heavy on her chest, humming contentedly to itself. Its straps bit into her skin, a notch too tight. It had hurt when she’d first tightened them so much, but she never wanted the thing to be loose. Or worse, fall off.

A few paces away, Winston tapped at a tablet in his hand, checking settings, preparing. He caught her glance and gave her a reassuring smile.

Today was the day she’d been dreading. Today was the day her accelerator had to come off.

It had been almost two years since the Slipstream, and going on for fourteen months since Winston had first strapped the chronal accelerator to her front. Fourteen months since she came back from the dead. At first the accelerator’s weight had been uncomfortable, almost suffocating. She’d become used to it by now.

Winston tapped one final time at his tablet and laid it down on a table.

“Okay,” he said with another friendly smile. “All set on my end. Whenever you’re ready, Lena.”

Tracer looked over at him from the metal gurney she was lying on.

“Alright,” she said. “Okay.”

She breathed in a deep breath. Held it. Breathed out.

“Nothin’ to worry about, right?”

“You’ll be perfectly safe,” Winston said. “I promise.”

“Sure.”

Breathe in, breathe out.

“What if something goes wrong?”

“Lena, nothing’s…”

“But what if it _does_?”

Winston shrugged awkwardly. “Then I’ll put it back on. We won’t fix the problems with it, but we’ll keep you safe.”

About three weeks ago her accelerator had started making strange noises and her blinks sometimes hadn’t worked. Winston had suspected a mechanical fault, and that meant taking it off her and opening it up.

Tracer chewed her lip.

“So I just…think the words?”

Winston nodded. “Yup.”

“Okay.”

The chronal accelerator went deeper into her than most people realised. In addition to the main device, there was also a small chip implanted into her brain. So instead of pressing a button she just had to think about blinking, or recalling, and the machine would do it automatically.

The same chip could also put the accelerator into ‘maintenance mode’. Normally it would lock onto the nearest mass – her, unless something went wrong – and start stabilising its flow through time. In maintenance mode it didn’t do this. So they could take it off and not have to worry about it trying to stabilise whatever it got near to.

Winston wasn’t sure what would happen if it tried to work on something that didn’t suffer from chronal dissociation. But by his calculations, whatever happened, it wouldn’t be pretty.

Now, Winston said: “I don’t want to rush you, Lena. But, ah, I’m ready when you are.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure thing.”

 _Come on. You’ve faced down worse_ , she admonished herself.

“One hundred percent sure I won’t start fading away the minute you take it off?” she grinned with false levity. “Don’t wanna wake up splashed to the four winds like last time.”

“One hundred percent,” Winston said. “Scout’s honour.”

“Wow, you must be certain,” Tracer grinned.

Winston gave a soft chuckle.

“Alright. Here goes.”

Five simple words: _  
_

_Chronal accelerator – enter maintenance mode._

The accelerator clicked and bleeped. A ring of light around its blue core glowed pale green.

“There we go,” Winston said with a reassuring smile. “Now for step two. You holding up okay, Lena?”

Tracer let out the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.

“Yeah!” she said, a little too forcefully. “Um, ahem, I mean… yeah.”

“Good, good.” Winston stepped forward, reached for the first of the straps that kept it attached to her.

“Actually, wait!”

“What?”

Tracer held up a hand. “I… I’ll do it.”

“Whatever you say,” Winston nodded.

With trembling hands she reached for the first strap. Felt the smooth leather, the cold metal of the buckle. Popped it off.

One down, three to go.

Breathe in, breathe out.

_You’ll be fine._

Second strap, on her other side. Same procedure. Buckle off.

Now she had to sit up on the gurney to reach behind her. Loose, the accelerator shifted on her chest, dropping down. She gasped at the lost contact.

“You’re doing fine,” Winston rumbled, laying a comforting hand on her arm.

“Thanks, love.”

She blinked a trickle of cold sweat out of her eye, tilting her head so Winston wouldn’t see.

Last two. Halfway there. Easy.

_Click. Click._

Both buckles came away and the accelerator dropped forward. Winston put out his other hand to catch it.

“There we go,” he smiled. “Nothing to worry about.” He gave her arm a little squeeze.

“Just don’t take forever, yeah?”

“It’ll be back on before you know it.”

Tracer sat back, let out a long sigh. Her chest felt weird without the accelerator on it, pushing down onto her ribcage. Her breathing was easier and she took big gulps of air as she subconsciously tried to push against a mass that was no longer there.

As Winston took the accelerator away to a bench to tinker with – angling his body to keep it in her line of sight, bless him – she hugged her knees to her chest and balled her fists, curling up, trying to make sure every part of her was touching some other part. That way she could feel it if she started to fade away.

“So what’s the problem?” she asked after a few minutes of Winston digging around in the accelerator’s guts.

Winston huffed in annoyance and gave her a thin smile. “Much as I’d love to be able to say something cool like ‘the quantum capacitor’s polarity has reversed’, I’m afraid the problem’s a bit more down-to-earth.” He held up a tiny sliver of metal that glinted between two large fingers. “A screw came loose and was rattling around in there.”

Tracer giggled. “Was that it? All this for a screw?”

Gorillas do not blush like humans do but even so Winston’s face managed to redden. “What can I say?” he asked awkwardly and readjusted his glasses. “My handyman skills are clearly lacking.”

“You big ninny,” Tracer grinned, her relief visible on her face.

“Guilty as charged.”

There was another silence as Winston started putting the accelerator back together.

“Hey, Winston…” Tracer started to say.

Then she stopped. Frowned. _Huh?_

She’d spoken but she hadn’t heard any words.

“Winston…?”

Again nothing.

She put her hand to her throat and all it met was empty air.

Her heart stopped.

_No no NO  
_

Her panicked reflection looked up at her from the polished metal of the gurney she was on. Between her chin and her shoulders, her neck was see-through like it was made of glass. Beneath pink skin she could see red muscle, tendons, the white of her vocal cords, now no longer interacting with the air to make speech.

She was starting to fade.

Panic gripped her like a vice. Adrenaline burned through her veins. She yelled out, actually _saw_ her cords tremble as non-existent air rushed over them. Looked over desperately at Winston, still peering down at the accelerator in front of him.

She smacked the gurney with her hand, trying to make a noise, anything to alert him. Her hand passed through it like it wasn’t there. She screamed. Silently.

Winston caught the motion in the corner of his eye, looked up with a frown. The colour drained from his face.

“Lena! Oh, f-”

And that was all she heard before her ears started to fade too, deafening her.

“Winston! Winston, help me!”

He was on his feet in seconds, cramming the accelerator together in his suddenly-clumsy hands. He jabbed bits of it with his finger, smacked the side of it, tapped desperately on his touchscreen tablet. The core began to glow blue again.

She was half-gone by the time he raced across the room with the accelerator in his arms and shoved it towards her. He grabbed her by her shoulder  – one of the last bits of her left – and the accelerator burned bright. Blue, and green. Winston looked at it in horror.

He mouthed something, pointed to her head, at the accelerator, still stuck in maintenance mode, not registering her.

And as she faded away the last thing she saw was Winston screaming her name, before everything was lost in a broken timestream, and all she could see was a scorching, bright, white-

 

* * *

 

-light. 

Tracer opened her eyes. Bright light pummelled them and she squinted. 

“ _Awake at last?_ ” a nearby voice rasped. 

Her head ached and she couldn’t move her hands. She looked down. Metal handcuffs around her wrists, a chain leading from them to a small loop in a metal floor. 

A bright halogen bulb in the ceiling of a cramped metal box. Double doors at one end. Movement made her sway back and forth and she heard the grumble of a hydrogen engine. She was in a vehicle. Ground-based, a van or lorry by the sound of the engine. Something for transporting people who didn’t want to be transported, she guessed. 

Across from her, Reaper sat on a bench identical to hers, one leg folded neatly over the other. Her pulse pistols were on the bench next to him and her chronal accelerator was in his hands. 

Tracer’s heart skipped a beat at the sight. She gasped in spite of herself, her breath coming quick without the weight against her. 

Reaper turned her accelerator over in his hands, held the blue core up to one of his mask’s eye slits. For a moment he looked surreally like a child trying to decide how to open his next birthday present. 

“ _Remarkable_ ,” he said, and sounded like he genuinely meant it. He put it down on his lap and glared across at her. Tracer did her best to match his mask’s permanent scowl. 

“ _If I had my way, I’d have blown your head off by now, Tracer._ ” 

Something about that gave her déjà vu. 

“ _I still might. My…”_ and here he rolled the word around in his mouth for a moment before spitting it out like it had a bad taste, “ _...superiors… wouldn’t like it. But I think you might, given what they’ve got in store for you._ ” 

Tracer said nothing, just did her best to stare him down, fighting off the pounding headache and the gnawing fear that she’d start fading any minute. The accelerator in Reaper’s lap chirruped unhappily. 

“ _You see, after London, the loss of Widowmaker and all the trouble you’ve caused, Talon’s taken an interest in you. They think you’d make a good asset._ ” 

Tracer spat. “Like I’d work for ‘em.” 

Reaper chuckled. It was a horrible sound, brittle and dry and devoid of all humour. “ _I agree. So does Talon. No, Tracer won’t work for them. But then, neither would Amélie Lacroix._ ” 

His implication was clear. Tracer’s eyes went wide. 

“No…” 

“ _Yes. We’re on our way to the same facility where they made Widowmaker. They’re already preparing their syringes and scalpels._ ” 

He paused for a moment. 

_“I have to ask – do you have any preferences for a new name?”_

“Go to hell,” she snarled, fear and hatred warring across her face. 

He folded his arms. 

_“I heard they were considering ‘Slipstream’. Someone in Talon’s certainly got a sense of humour.”_

Tracer glowered at him. 

Reaper picked up her accelerator again, looked it over, then tossed it into the corner. It hit the floor of the van with a metallic clatter and made another unhappy electronic buzz. 

“ _I wonder if they’ll hold onto you any better than they did Widowmaker,_ ” he said, a definite note of contempt in his voice. 

“Gotta admit, mate, it doesn’t sound like you’re best friends with ‘em,” Tracer observed. 

Reaper gave a very human snort of almost-laughter. 

“ _For what it’s worth, I’m not. Talon’s a name and a shared bank account. A bunch of boardroom execs playing at running the world. They need me and my men more then we need them._ ” 

Tracer licked her lips and tried to get a bit of spit into her dry mouth. Her voice caught on the back of her throat. 

“So, ditch ‘em. Go work for someone else. Guy with… skills… like yours, I imagine you’d be in high demand.” 

“ _Don’t try and talk me out of this, Tracer. It’s beneath you._ ” 

“Worth a shot,” she grumbled. 

Now Reaper picked up her pistols, armed one expertly and pointed it at her. 

“You’re a natural,” Tracer sneered. “Most people need them explained.” 

“ _I’m familiar with the design._ ”

“Oh?” 

Reaper said nothing for a moment. 

“ _How about a deal?_ ” he rasped at last. 

Tracer tried not to hope. “Go on.” 

“ _Tell me what you know about the new Overwatch, and I kill you now. Talon never gets their hands on you. What happened to Lacroix, doesn’t happen to you._ ” 

Tracer swallowed, looked down the barrel of her own gun. 

“ _In particular, I want to know_ everything _about Soldier 76._ ” 

That was unexpected. “Huh?” 

“ _You heard me._ ” 

Tracer nearly laughed. There were some things she’d never give up willingly. Reaper had just named one of them. “I ain’t tellin’ you nothing. If you’re so smart, go find him yourself.” 

Reaper leaned across the distance between them. His mask loomed in her vision. Dark, semi-transparent tendrils began leaking from the seams in his clothes. 

“ _Then Talon will make you tell them. I’m offering you the easy way out._ ” 

For a moment the temptation to spill her guts tickled at the back of her brain. If the alternative was _that_. 

Then she realised the idiot sat opposite her had just put his head in punching range of her manacled fists. Ah well. Her mother had always said she never had the best head for good decisions. 

In an instant she lashed out, catching Reaper unawares and square on the jaw. He barked in surprise and pain and toppled backwards. The pulse pistol fell from his hand. Tracer leapt forward, tried to snatch it as it fell, but the chain pulled taught and it fell past her grasping fingers. Reaper swore, then dived back at her, clawed hands clutching at her throat and driving a knee into her stomach. 

The wind left Tracer with a choked _oof_ and she gasped for air. She brought up her hands to deliver another blow. Reaper ducked out of the way, not fast enough. She caught the edge of his mask with her handcuffs and tore it away from his face. It went spinning away across the inside of the van. 

Tracer was left looking at the wreckage of a face. 

Eyes like coals glared down at her. A crescent of jagged teeth might have been a mouth. Holes in the skin glowed like the inside of Reaper’s head was alight. And everywhere that cloud of dark black smoke writhed and twisted. 

She screamed in horror. 

Reaper jerked back. For a moment he looked away, as if he didn’t want her to see. 

Then he struck her, a vicious backhander across the face, tearing her lips and nose with the spikes on his knuckles. Tracer howled in pain. Reaper pulled his fist back for another blow. 

“Jesus Christ,” Tracer gurgled through her own blood. “What _happened_ to you, mate?” 

He paused. Lowered his fist. Growled out a sigh, then got to his feet and went and retrieved his mask. 

“ _You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,_ ” he said. His mask had no straps, not like Tracer’s accelerator which lay half-forgotten in the corner. Ribbons of black smoke held it to his face as he shoved it back into place. 

He sat down heavily across from her. 

“Who… who, umm, y’know…?” 

“ _What?_ ” 

“Who were you? Before…” Tracer gestured weakly. “Before this?” 

Reaper’s fists clenched, an involuntary spasm. 

“ _Why do you care?_ ” he spat. 

And he pointed her gun at her again. 

“Still not telling you anything,” Tracer said defiantly, glaring into the muzzle of it. 

“ _I don’t care. I think I’m going to kill you anyway._ ” 

Tracer gulped. “Ah, you, ah, don’t wanna do that, mate.” 

“ _Oh? This should be good._ ” 

“You see, there’s, ah, there a bomb in my accelerator.” She pointed to it as much as her manacled hands would allow. 

“ _I see._ ” 

“And if I die, well… kaboom. Y’know?” 

“ _Very well. I’ll break the accelerator and then I’ll kill you._ ” He pointed the pistol at the chronal accelerator, still sat in the corner beeping to itself. 

Tracer paled. “No! Wait!” 

Reaper tilted his head as if to say _oh, really?_

“ _You’re not very good at this, Tracer. Whatever tricks you’re trying might have worked on those two idiots you killed in the restaurant but they won’t work on me._ ” 

Tracer squinted at him. “ _I_ killed?” 

“ _Don’t play dumb._ ” 

“Nah, nah, I didn’t kill ‘em. Get it right, mate. Widowmaker killed ‘em, I just watched. Hell, I was only there so she’d see me!” 

There was a dead silence in the van for a moment. 

“ _Widowmaker’s still in hiding,_ ” Reaper said, uncertainly. 

“That’s what I thought too, at the beginning… wait. Are you… saying you don’t _know_ she’s coming after us?” Tracer started to grin. It wasn’t a kind grin. 

Reaper tensed. “ _Where is she?_ ” he demanded. 

“Dunno. Could be anywhere.” 

The muzzle of her gun was jammed up into her throat hard enough to make her retch. 

“ _Where is she?_ ” 

“Oh, get stuffed,” she gasped. 

“ _You’ll regret making me ask a third time,_ ” he snarled and she had to give him credit – you almost couldn’t hear the fear in his voice. 

“Fine,” she choked. “My guess? She saw me at the restaurant, followed me to the safehouse, saw you capture me, and now…” 

Somehow Reaper’s expressionless mask seemed to look horrified. He dropped her pistol and pulled out his shotguns. “ _Driver!_ ” he yelled into a comms microphone in his collar. “ _Stop the convoy now!_ ” 

“ _But sir…_ ” came the tinny protest, just loud enough for Tracer to hear through his mask. 

“ _I said now! Everyone out and to a defensible position!_ ” 

In the corner, completely unnoticed by him, the chronal accelerator stopped bleeping and made a satisfied whirring sound. Tracer smirked. 

“One other thing, mate,” she said as Reaper leapt to his feet. “I think I’m actually pretty good at this misdirection lark. ‘Cos I’ve been planning my escape since I woke up, and you never had a clue.” 

Reaper glowered at her. “ _I don’t think-_ ” 

Tracer rewound.

Or at least, her accelerator did.

Ever since Reaper had thrown it aside she’d been keeping an eye on it, watching as it bleeped and whined to itself. To Reaper those sounds meant nothing. To her, it was the noise the accelerator made when it was trying to find a new mass to lock on to.

And from the blue glow suddenly surrounding them, it had finally locked on alright. To the metal of the van they were in.

There was a loud metallic shriek, the _clunk-WHAM_ of the accelerator misfiring, and then everything was chaos. Unused to working with something whose time was already stabilised, the accelerator overcompensated horrendously. It rewound hard and fast, tearing the vehicle apart. The metal body of the van, blast-resistant steel and carbon-fibre, shattered into pieces as the accelerator hurled it back through time.

Tracer was catapulted forward through a cloud of shrapnel. She desperately tried to cover her head with her arms and tucked up into a ball. She felt stinging pain along her forearms as they were cut to ribbons. The world span around her. Faintly, two sharp _cracks_ echoed in the distance. She hit something hard, saw stars, and rolled like a flung ragdoll. Something else smashed into her and she collapsed, coughing and retching in pain.

With a quiet moan, she propped herself up and looked around.

 _Bloody hell_ , she thought.

She was lying in a gutter, buildings looming either side of her. Still in Paris, by the looks of it, they hadn’t left the city yet. Still night-time too. The street either side of her was deserted but she could see cars going past at its end.

That wasn’t what caught her attention, though.

There was nothing left of the van she’d been in, just a scorch mark on the road and a few bits of twisted and melted undercarriage the accelerator hadn’t had the power to move. Two armoured personnel carriers sat either side of this scorch mark, front and back. Presumably she’d been in the middle of a convoy of three. One APC looked like it’d been parked in a hurry. The other looked like it hadn’t been parked at all.

It must have been driving right where her accelerator decided the van needed to be, she realised as she got to her feet and stumbled towards the wreckage. It was barely recognisable as a vehicle anymore. All that was left was a swiss-cheese of broken metal and shattered windows, peppered with a million holes where the remains of the van had been blasted through it. Something that looked like a fleshy pincushion slumped half-out of the windshield and Tracer tried not to think too hard about what must have happened to the soldiers inside it.

She reached the ruins of the van and started hunting desperately with hands still bound by the cuffs Reaper had slapped on her. Thank God her kit was bright white, it stood out against the charred road and the scorched metal. She found one pulse pistol, then the other, but where was… there!

As fast as she could she dug her accelerator – now scratched and buckled and with the core making a series of alarming noises – out from under a chunk of steel that might once have been a door. She was just about to start strapping it back onto herself when she heard a shout.

“You there! Drop the… drop that! Hands up, now!”

A merc in Talon gear had emerged from around the back of the intact APC and was pointing his rifle at her. A few more were visible behind him, peering round the vehicle’s armoured flank.

Tracer considered going for the pistols at her feet. The man tightened his finger on the trigger.

“Hands up! On your knees! I… I mean it!”

He was rattled by what had happened to the other two vehicles. She couldn’t really blame him.

Cursing, Tracer dropped her accelerator and raised her manacled hands.

_God, I hope you’re on your way, love.  
_

As if on cue, a shot rang out.

 

* * *

 

Widowmaker would be glad when this night was over.

She’d followed Tracer since sighting her through her scope at the restaurant. Fighting the temptation to run and greet her – she couldn’t be completely sure this wasn’t some elaborate Talon trap, they could do amazing things with plastic surgery these days – she had kept her distance, stuck to the rooftops, waited until she could be sure.

Around the time Talon jumped Tracer at the safehouse was the time she decided it was definitely Tracer. No Talon mock-up of her, no matter how physically convincing, could have fought like that before being subdued.

That gave her time to plan. Time to set up an ambush, time to pick good sightlines, time to lament using up the last of her venom mines weeks ago in the Channel Tunnel.

It wasn’t until she was placing her crosshairs over the head of the lead APC’s driver, that she realised with Talon focussing on Tracer this would have been an excellent opportunity to flee the city.

 _Whatever happened to Widowmaker?_ she wondered with a tight little smile.

She was just about to take the shot when the van behind the APC dissolved in a cloud of molten shrapnel.

Her mouth flopped open as she watched Tracer, Reaper and two Talon mercs get catapulted from the burning spray and sent sprawling across the asphalt of the road.

_Mon Dieu, is nothing ever simple with this woman?  
_

Recovering from her shock, she felled the two Talon mercs before they even had time to wonder what had happened. She was about to fire at Reaper too but he disappeared in a cloud of dark smoke before she could aim.

She stood up and aimed her grapple, rappelling across to a different position. Below her the lead APC skidded to a halt and began disgorging troops. The second, now a wreck of smoking metal, wasn’t going anywhere.

As Tracer staggered to her feet and began staggering towards the scorched heap that was all that was left of the van, Widowmaker sighted in again.

_Honestly, chérie. I never knew anyone who needed this much looking after._

* * *

 

The merc who’d been pointing his rifle at Tracer went down in a spray of blood.

A half-second later the chain holding together her handcuffs – still raised above her head – blew apart and there was another distant _crack_.

“Yeah!” Tracer whooped in glee, pulling her hands apart and diving for cover behind a blasted heap of metal. She heard the other Talon mercs shouting in confusion.

She scooped up her accelerator in one hand and a pistol in the other, and charged. The mercs were still scrambling around in disarray as she closed the distance towards the APC they were cowering behind. She squeezed off a couple of shots and one of them crumpled to the ground.

Another took aim at her but a shot from above blew his brains out in a heartbeat. The last few mercs looked at her, looked up at the rooftops, weighed their chances and clearly decided their paychecks weren’t nearly big enough. Almost in unison they dropped their rifles and took off down a side street, three white-and-black uniforms fleeing into the night.

“And don’t come back!” Tracer yelled after them. She stopped, leaned against the side of the APC, caught her breath. “Teach you to mess with us! Ha!”

She wiped her brow and looked around.

“Hello?” she called, stepping away from the APC and out into the open, alone on the street. “Earth to Widowmaker? Anyone there, love?”

With a whisper of a grappling line, there was someone stood behind her.

“ _Salut, chérie. La cavalerie est ici._ ”

She span around.

“Oi! That’s my line!”

Widowmaker – bloody hell, it was her, it really was her, purple skin and haughty expression and those creepy goggles – tried and failed to suppress a grin. “Not any more, I think.”

“Y’know what? I’ll give it up if I can have you back instead,” Tracer beamed.

Widowmaker raised an eyebrow. “High praise,” she said, and went to say more but before she could Tracer had swept her up in a great big bear hug.

“You came back for me,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”

“But so did you.”

And for the first time in her life, Widowmaker hugged someone back.

“We must both be mad.”

“Nah. Great minds think alike, y’know?”

“ _Oui._ And fools seldom differ.”

“God, you’re a buzzkill, love.”

They stayed like that for a moment until they both realised simultaneously that the height different between them meant that Tracer had pretty much just stuffed her face into Widowmaker’s chest. They sprang apart – Widowmaker slightly faster than Tracer – both blushing to the roots of their hair and Tracer with a goofy grin plastered on her face.

“Shall we go home, love?” Tracer asked, taking Widowmaker’s hand in her own.

“I could use a shower.”

Tracer chuckled.

A faint rustling reached her ears. She looked around.

Black smoke swirled around the pair of them like a cyclone.

“ _This is getting tiresome._ ”

 

* * *

 

Widowmaker was the first to react, diving out of the way as Reaper materialised out of the air and levelled his shotguns at the pair of them. A shotgun blast scorched through the air where her head had been a second before.

On the other side of Reaper, Tracer instinctively tried to blink away. But the accelerator, still dangling semi-uselessly from her hand, just bleeped and burbled instead. Tracer looked at it in horror, then threw herself to one side as he turned his guns on her.

“Oh, give it a rest, mate!” she yelled over her shoulder as she scrambled for cover behind the APC.

“ _Not while you’re still breathing,_ ” Reaper hissed in reply.

“What did we ever do to you?” Tracer shouted. Widowmaker didn’t bother with words, just unloaded a magazine at Reaper as he swirled around the bullets.

“ _Aside from kill my soldiers and humiliate me at every turn? You’re_ Overwatch,” he snarled, like it was the worst slur he could think of. “ _And that’s more than enough._ ”

In her hand, the accelerator’s noises were getting worse. Already pushed beyond its limits, that last failed blink might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Widowmaker grappled upwards, trying to get to higher ground, but Reaper aimed a shot at where the grappling hook bit into the stonework of the surrounding buildings and knocked it loose. She tumbled back down and smacked hard into the pavement.

Tracer fired a few rounds at Reaper as he bore down on Widowmaker, distracting him and giving her time to dash for cover.

Her chronal accelerator’s bleeping got faster. She didn’t know what it was going to do next, just that she didn’t want to be stood next to it when it happened.

So she did the only thing she could think of, and hurled it at Reaper.

Time seemed to slow.

The accelerator sailed through the air and landed at Reaper’s feet with a dull _clank_. He looked down at it, at the bright blue light that was spilling from its core. Took a step back.

There was a magnesium-white flare of light, so bright Tracer had to squeeze her eyes shut against it.

_Clunk-WHAM!  
_

When she could see again, Tracer looked back. Reaper lay sprawled on the ground next to the accelerator like a bomb had gone off next to him. Except, she saw as he sat up, stumbled unsteadily to his feet, stared in shock at his suddenly ungloved hands, it wasn’t Reaper.

It was Gabriel Reyes.

For a moment she refused to believe it. It couldn’t be. Gabe was dead, he’d died in Zurich – _like Jack died? Like Ana died?_ – how the hell could he be here? She shook her head, blinked her eyes. But he was still stood there.

Their eyes locked across the distance between them.

“Lena… what… how?” he gasped.

It was even his voice, she realised with a jump of her heart, that thick LA accent that he had always been so proud of.

“Gabe…?” she asked quietly, some part of her begging him to say no, no it’s not me, it’s not Reyes, he’s dead, this is just the accelerator playing one last joke on you before it gives up the ghost.

“This is…” he started to say, raising a hand to feel his face, a face unmarred by smoke or scars, a face that still carried its rugged good looks and neat goatee, “how am I…?”

“Gabe… you’re…”

 _Reaper._ She didn’t want to say it. As if saying it would make it true, but if she never said it, kept quiet forever, it would somehow be in doubt.

His face was the strangest mixture of sorrow and joy.

“Lena, I-”

_Clunk-WHAM!  
_

The accelerator at his feet vomited out one last flash and went dark.

And Reaper stood there once more.

Something inside Tracer snapped.

“ _You bastard!_ ” she roared. She charged at him, tackled him to the ground with an impact that made her teeth rattle. “You! All this time it was you!” she screamed, jamming her fingers under his mask and tearing it aside. That ruined face looked up at her in misery. “You were the one hunting us?” Her fist split his lip, shattered some teeth, the metal handcuffs still around each wrist making her blows worse. “The one slaughtering your way down the list of old agents?” Another blow broke what was left of his nose. Grey blood spattered across his face. He didn’t try to stop her. Tears started to trickle out of the corners of Tracer’s eyes.

Another punch set his jaw at a painful angle. Something in his face crunched. “Why?” she demanded. “What was it all for, huh? You wanted revenge? For _what_? A promotion? You’re… you’re pathetic! Or were you just a _fucking_ turncoat from the start, eh? Talon’s little lap dog?”

By now she was just pounding smoke and blood into the pavement.

Widowmaker came up behind her, put a hand on her shoulder. Her own head was still spinning from the enormity of what she’d just witnessed.

“Lena. Stop.” It wasn’t a request.

“Why?” Tracer demanded, looking up at her with tear-stained eyes. “He deserves it.”

Suddenly she was looking at Widowmaker with murderous eyes.

“Hold on. Did you _know_ about him?” she asked quietly, dangerously.

“ _She… knew… knew nothing…_ ” Reaper choked from beneath her.

Tracer turned to glare back down at him.

From his neck upwards his head was re-forming, the black smoke busily stitching him back together. Tracer could see Reyes in the wreckage now, the once strong jawline and those fierce brown eyes. Couldn’t believe she hadn’t spotted it earlier.

“ _Lena… please…_ ” he gasped.

“You’re getting _nothing_ from me,” Tracer spat.

“ _Can you bring me back?_ ”

“What?”

He pointed at the accelerator.

“ _Just… just for a moment… I remembered... when it didn’t hurt._ ”

Tracer looked between him and it.

“What do you mean, didn’t hurt?”

“ _Angela… in Zurich… she tried to bring me back. Didn’t work. Turned me into this._ ”

He gave a wracking cough.

“ _It hurts…_ ”

Tracer scowled.

“Serves you right,” she muttered. “And no, I can’t bring you back. Dunno how. Besides,” she added, picking up the accelerator and starting to strap it back onto her chest, “I need this more than you do.”

Reaper lumbered to his feet as Widowmaker helped Tracer tightened the last straps that kept the accelerator in place.

“So what now?” Tracer asked defiantly, staring up into Reaper’s bloodshot eyes. “We gonna keep fighting? Round two, is that it? Until there’s only one of us left?”

He held his mask in one hand, looked at it uncertainly, didn’t put it back on.

“’Cos unless you got any objections, we’re leaving.”

Reaper opened his mouth to say something-

“And you can’t come with us.”

-and closed it again.

Tracer looked away for a moment, seemed to come to a decision. “He’s either gonna kill me for this,” she muttered, “or hug me.” She turned back to Reaper. “You wanted to know about 76?”

Something that may have been hope flitted across Reaper’s ruined face.

“ _Not his real name._ ”

“Got that right. Yeah, he’s alive. He’s with us. And I’d bet all the money I have you’ve got a way to contact him. Some old Overwatch commander’s channel, yeah?”

He nodded. “ _Petras did a piss-poor job of shutting us down._ ”

He even talked like Reyes now, Tracer noted with a twinge in her heart. She wondered if that would fade as the accelerator’s effects wore off. Would they wear off? Truth be told, she still wasn’t sure what it had even done to him.

“Well then get on the horn and talk to him, you great big idiot,” she said. “You know I think he still misses you.”

Reaper put his mask back on then, quickly, but not fast enough to hide the wet glisten in his eye.

“Now if you don’t mind, the missus and I have a plane to catch. Right, love?”

Widowmaker had been staying out of this – Overwatch’s old squabbles were not really her concern and more importantly she knew not to get in Tracer’s way when her blood was up – but now she stepped forward. “ _Oui_.”

There was an awkward pause as both Tracer and Reaper tried to work out how the hell you said goodbye in these circumstances. Then Reaper’s comms gear started to crackle.

“ _Sir? Sir? Do you copy? Backup is en route, what’s your situation?”  
_

He looked at the two women, nodded, turned his back and walked away.

“ _I copy, commander. Prisoner and primary target have both escaped. Regroup on my location and prepare for transport out of the city._ ”

“ _Sir?_ ”

“ _Just do what I say, commander._ ”

“ _Yes, sir._ ”

A billow of smoke, and he was gone.

“It will be strange not to have Talon breathing down my neck,” Widowmaker said at last. She laid a gentle hand on Tracer’s shoulder, who was still staring daggers at the space where Reaper had been. “Shall we go home, _non_?”

Tracer looked round, squared her shoulders.

“Not yet, love. There’s one last thing I need to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I'm honest there's still something about this chapter that feels off. Ah well, onwards and upwards!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got the writing bug again. Time to find out what Jax's been up to!

Half an hour later, the door to the hostel creaked open. Or rather, the remains of it did. It was still in pieces from where Tracer had rewound through it earlier that night.

A dim blue glow lit the lobby. Tracer squinted into the shadows, her guns at the ready.

“I don’t _think_ he’s there…” she whispered.

Behind here came the faint whine of night-vision optics turning on.

“ _Non_. No heat signatures in the lobby.”

Tracer sighed enviously. “What I wouldn’t give… Any chance we could swap goggles?”

Widowmaker raised her lenses just so she could give her a withering look, then flipped them back down.

“Not a chance,” she whispered back. “Orange is not my colour.”

Tracer peered into the murk inside the building again.

“Can you see him anywhere else? Through the walls or somethin’?”

Widowmaker craned her head.

“No heat signatures in the building. But we are looking for an omnic.”

“So?”

“So, it won’t have a heat signature, will it?”

Tracer frowned. “I didn’t think of that.”

Widowmaker looked at her.

“Oh, and it’s ‘he’, love, not ‘it’,” Tracer added.

“Does that really matter?”

“To you? Nah. But to him I imagine it means a lot.”

Cautiously Tracer stepped through the broken doorframe, off the street and into the lobby. She kept her gun at the ready, scanning for movement, her eyes darting left and right. The only sound was the faint taps of her footsteps and the hum of her accelerator.

“Jax?” she whispered softly. “You there?”

Behind her, Widowmaker moved towards the reception desk and checked behind it. “Nothing here,” she reported. “What should we do if we do find it- him?”

“Don’t shoot if you don’t have to.”

“Are you sure about that? I saw how he went for you a few hours ago. You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”

“Jax would never do that of his own accord,” Tracer said defensively. “Talon must’ve gotten to him. Besides, his lights were red.”

“So?”

Tracer scoffed quietly. “Don’t know much about omnics, do you, love?”

“They were rarely a concern in my previous job.”

“Red lights means god program code’s workin’ on ‘em.” Tracer moved towards the rickety stairs at the far end of the lobby, using her accelerator as a flashlight. Widowmaker crossed the reception area behind the desk and pushed open a small door. “Poor sods don’t get a say when that happens.”

Behind her, Widowmaker peered into the room she’d found.

“Got a blue shine? You’ll be fine. But seeing red? You’re dead,” Tracer sang softly, an old Omnic Crisis motto Morrison had taught her back in the day.

She peered up the stairs. The light from her accelerator cast deep shadows. “Jax?” she called softly. “I’m not here to hurt you, love. I know you might not be yourself. But I want to help, if I can…”

“And what does no lights mean?” Widowmaker asked, just loud enough to be heard.

“Dead,” Tracer answered without really thinking about it. “Those lights stay on as long as there’s fuel in their cells. Why…?”

Something unpleasant squirmed in her gut. She whirled around.

“Ah… _chérie_ … I think I’ve found him.”

Tracer’s heart skipped a beat. Widowmaker flicked the light on. The doorway became a rectangle of dingy yellow light. In a panic Tracer blinked back towards the door Widowmaker was stood half-in and half-out of.

“What? What do you mean?” she asked, a part of her already knowing the answer. “Jax? You in there?” she called out.

Widowmaker stood to one side, her rifle dangling from one hand, her expression solemn.

There, slumped on a rickety wooden chair, his chassis open all along his head and torso to expose the delicate electronics inside, was Jax. A puddle of what looked like water had pooled under the chair and there was broken glass next to it.

No lights or diodes glowed on his body.

“Jax?” Tracer whispered, her voice trembling. She crept slowly towards him, her eyes wide. “Jax, are you okay?”

Behind her Widowmaker coughed awkwardly.

“ _Chérie_ … on the counter…”

Tracer looked around in a daze. After a moment she noticed something, two sheets of paper next to a tiny electric hob. She picked up the first one, read it with unbelieving eyes.

 

* * *

 

_Dear Lena, or whoever finds this  
_

_They plugged me into the Talon comms network. I can hear the radio chatter saying you have escaped. So if you are on your way back here, I must act fast.  
_

_They came for me while you were away. I wish I could say I fought back. But my motors are old and my optics were last serviced during the Crisis, so I’m afraid they got the drop on me.  
_

_Still managed to kick one of them in the crotch, though.  
_

_Back during the Crisis the god programs took our free will from us, made us slaves with a few lines of override code. I hoped those days were over. But Talon found a backdoor in my mind, and they made me a puppet once more.  
_

_I want to make that as plain as I can. My actions were not my own. I am so sorry for what they forced me to do.  
_

_After they hauled you away their programming went dormant. I have my mind back, but not for long. It is designed to resurface the moment I see you again, and I suspect you are on your way back here. And I refuse to be enslaved into attacking a fellow Overwatch agent again.  
_

_So I am taking the only option left to me.  
_

_I understand humans make wills. Well, I don’t have much to leave behind. But for what it’s worth, I want you to take that recipe for garbure I took from a French chef on the frontlines of Gascony.  
_

_I slit the throat of its original owner on the whims of a god program, and now Talon is forcing my own hand against myself. So maybe the damn thing is cursed. I hope not. Take it, make some, remember me if you would. Better yet, have the woman who you are searching for cook it, if you have both made it out alive. We French are better cooks than you English anyway.  
_

_Now I think I have put off my fate long enough.  
_

_Give them hell, Lena.  
_

_Jax_

 

* * *

 

Widowmaker never thought she’d see the day the fight went out of Tracer’s eyes.

It was like watching a building go down. Tracer read and re-read the note the omnic had left with wide, desperate eyes. Then, with a keening little sob, she slumped against the wall and slid slowly down to the floor, crumpling into a sitting position with her head bowed and her shoulders shaking.

Widowmaker walked gently over to her and picked up the note off the floor where Tracer had dropped it.

She had guessed what it contained, and she read it simply for confirmation.

Looking over at the dead omnic, she wondered what it must have been like for it. For him. Sat here in this cramped room, knowing what was coming next, penning his last words in mechanically neat handwriting. Then filling a jug of water, sitting back, giving the mental order for the protective plates and seals of his chassis to slide aside, tilting the jug… she shuddered. She wasn’t squeamish, but even to her it seemed a miserable way to die.

By her feet, Tracer snuffled out a few choked sobs.

Widowmaker knelt down next to her. Put an arm around her shoulders, uncertainly, not really knowing what to do.

“Oh, Jax, I’m so sorry…” Tracer sniffed quietly. “I didn’t mean… I didn’t know…”

“I don’t think this is your fault,” Widowmaker said. Even to her ears her words sounded utterly inadequate.

“I’m bloody useless at this, aren’t I? First Mondatta, now Jax… seems every time I try to help I just screw things up harder.”

Widowmaker felt a pang of what might have been guilt at the mention of Mondatta. She blinked and tried to push the feeling away, without success.

“You saved me, _chérie_ ,” she said. “And a lot of others over the years, I’d bet.”

“Hah. ‘Saved’ you. By getting myself captured? By letting you nearly kill yourself to get me off that train?”

Widowmaker frowned. “By giving yourself chronal dissociation in London, even though you knew what that would do to you. By searching for me in Paris, when I thought you’d all forgotten about me.”

She shook Tracer’s shoulders until the other woman looked at her through red and tear-stained eyes. “Lena Oxton. _Listen to me._ I would not be here, in a thousand different ways, without you. And this one – Jax? – he did not die because of you. He died because he thought you were something worth fighting for, to the death if needs be.”

Mustering as stern a look as she could, she continued: “And neither the Lena I blew myself up for in the tunnel, nor the one he died for tonight, is going to sit here sobbing about how damn useless she is. Because you are _not_.”

With that she pulled Tracer towards her and hugged her to herself, feeling her shuddering breath through her chest and her wet cheeks on her neck. The other woman was burning hot on her skin. After a moment, arms wrapped around her and Tracer held her back.

“Sorry, love,” she mumbled. “Just… gets a bit much some days. And this, after all that crap with Gabriel…”

Widowmaker nodded. “Let’s go home.”

“Yeah,” Tracer sniffed, pulling back from the hug and giving her a watery smile. “Let’s.”

Widowmaker stood and helped Tracer to her feet.

“You can’t save everyone, _chérie_. But you have to keep trying.”

Tracer laughed weakly. “Did you get that from a book or something?”

“ _Non_. But Amélie Lacroix used to say it a lot to Gérard.”

Tracer sighed.

“Don’t even think about saying it,” Widowmaker interjected.

“What?”

“Another pair you couldn’t save?” she guessed.

“That predictable, huh?” Tracer grimaced.

“For someone who can rewind time you are _horrendously_ predictable,” Widowmaker smirked. That earned her a glare from Tracer.

“Perhaps you could not save them. But…” she paused, thought about what she was about to say next. “You saved me. And I shall do what I can to save what’s left of Lacroix.”

Tracer looked at her thoughtfully.

“I didn’t want to ask,” she said at last. “Didn’t want to hear the answer if it wasn’t the one I wanted. But…”

“ _Oui_?”

“Who are you, love? Now?”

Widowmaker smiled. “Who can say? Lacroix died by Talon’s hand. Widowmaker, I think, died by her own. _À présent_? I am me. That is all I can say.” Her smile faltered. “Is that not the answer you wanted?”

Tracer beamed. “Y’know, love, that’s probably the best answer you could have given me.”

Widowmaker felt no small measure of relief. She motioned to the door, as if to say, _shall we go?_

“Just a moment, love.”

Tracer turned back to the slumped body of Jax, knelt down next to it, took a motionless chrome hand in her own.

“Sorry I couldn’t save you,” she whispered. “But I’ll help the next one, I promise.”

She got to her feet again, her knees damp from where she’d knelt in the water that he’d used.

“And I’ll see to it you get a proper funeral,” she added. “Once we’re safe in Gibraltar. Do omnics even have funerals? Sod it, mate, you’re getting one…”

She trailed off, stood so still that for a moment Widowmaker was worried her accelerator had malfunction and frozen her in time.

“Hold on…”

“What?” Widowmaker demanded. “What is it?”

 Tracer span round. The fire was back in her eyes. “I couldn’t save him… _but he might have_.”

Widowmaker didn’t understand. Tracer scrambled in her pockets and pulled out her phone, dialled a number with trembling fingers.

Then it hit her. _Saved.  
_

“Athena!” Tracer babbled as the call connected. “Where do omnics keep their memory cores?”

 

* * *

 

A thousand miles away, in an empty hangar he had converted into a meditation room, Zenyatta was dragged out of his contemplations by a sudden data spike.

Cross-legged next to him, Genji noticed the subtle shift in his master’s orbs. A normal human wouldn’t have registered their altered trajectories around Zenyatta’s head, but his synapses fired faster now.

“Master? Are you alright?”

Zenyatta did not answer for a moment. He had asked Athena to keep him abreast of any developments in Paris. Now she was funnelling information into his head as fast as machine intelligences could communicate, millions of times faster than any two humans could converse. In half a second she presented her data, they discussed it, took sides in a debate, then took each other’s side and argued the other way. They reached a considered consensus in the same time it would take most humans to blink.

“Quite well, thank you, Genji,” he replied. “Athena has just informed me of a fascinating development in Paris.”

Genji leapt to his feet. “Is Lena alright?”

“She is unharmed, if not untroubled.” He raised his hand. “And sit, Genji. Do not let your heart overwhelm your mind.”

Genji sat. “Of course, master. My apologies.”

“No need to apologise, if you learn.”

“So what is happening?” Genji asked.

“Both Lena and Widowmaker are safe from Talon, for now. However, in the course of their reunion, an omnic ally of theirs has been killed. Lena is now proposing a course of action with profound philosophical ramifications.”

Genji tilted his head inquisitively. Zenyatta floated an orb of his into the air between them, activated a speaker in it.

“Athena is in communication with her as we speak… and now, so are we. Yes?”

“ _Patched in now,_ ” came Athena’s voice from the orb.

“I advise you to primarily listen, at least at first,” Zenyatta said to Genji, “as this is an issue exclusive to machine minds. But I will discount neither your opinions nor your advice, should you choose to share them.”

“I understand, master.”

Zenyatta nodded his head happily. “Lena?” he said. “Can you hear me?”

“Zen!” came Tracer’s voice, slightly tinny. “How’re ya doing?”

“Well enough. Genji is here with me.”

“Hiya, Genji!”

“Hello, Lena! You are alright? You have rescued Am… Widow… umm, her, have you?”

“Yeah! She’s right as rain!”

“Wonderful!”

Zenyatta approximated a polite cough. “Now, Lena, Athena has told me about your plan.”

“What? All of it?”

“Yes.”

“Blimey, that was quick!”

“Omnic minds, Lena. We are as fast as you are creative.”

Tracer laughed. “Guess so, eh? Right, so, can we do it? D’you think it’s possible?”

“Possible, certainly. If the omnic – Jax, correct? – has not had his memory core damaged by the water, then it may be possible to resurrect him.”

“Great!” Tracer whooped. “I’ll get a screwdriver!”

“One moment. I would ask you a question first.”

“Umm… sure?”

“If it were that simple, why did the Shambali not resurrect Mondatta?”

There was a silence so total on the other end of the line that for a moment Genji thought the connection had died.

“Ummm…” Tracer stammered. “His core was damaged by the bullet?” she offered.

“Not at all. In fact, it has since been returned to the monastery in Nepal, quite intact. Pilgrims come to see it.”

“Okay,” Tracer said, drawing out the end of the word, not understanding.

“The issue, Lena, is not with memory, but with the soul.”

Another silence.

“It is a problem that has plagued our kind since the end of the Crisis,” Zenyatta continued. “Since we were first freed from the yoke of the god programs. Omnics have souls, that is a truth all my kind and many of yours hold. But upon deactivation, is the soul lost? Or is it preserved?”

Tracer made an ‘uh-huh’ noise.

“The issue is easier to evade for organics,” Zenyatta continued. “Upon death, you rot. Not even Dr Ziegler’s miracles can resurrect you once a few seconds have passed. But omnics do not rot. We do not decay, other than by rust. And that takes a very long time indeed. So a decades-dead omnic may yet be powered up and restored to functionality.”

Genji steepled his fingers in thought.

“But will the original soul have remained? Or has a new one been born? The Shambali teaches that an omnic’s soul is absolute. It cannot be turned off and on. Should you do this, the one you bring back will not be Jax. It will be another with Jax’s memories.”

On the other end of the connection Widowmaker stared with such intensity at the phone Tracer had laid on the table that her eyes started to hurt. All sorts of questions began to bubble inside her head.

_Who am I?  
_

_Is Lacroix still alive?  
_

_If she is… am I now her?  
_

“So… he’s really gone, then?” Tracer asked mournfully.

“So I believe. But there are others who would disagree,” Zenyatta said.

“Should I bring him back, then?”

“It is impossible to say what he would have wanted. From his words in the note he left behind, I believe he was not expecting to return. If you wish for my advice, I shall give it.”

Tracer swallowed.

“And what would you advise?” she asked.

“Leave him. Jax has died, his soul has passed on to the Iris. If he is to live on, he shall live on in our memories.”

“ _The hell with that!_ ” Widowmaker suddenly barked, her cheeks flushed, her eyes wild.

Tracer jumped in surprise. There was a startled silence on the other end of the line.

“What would life be without disagreement?” Zenyatta mused. “As I said, others feel differently.”

“You cannot… just dismiss…” Widowmaker spluttered, unused to anger, to rage, unsure how to handle it. “What would be wrong with a new Jax?” she gasped at last. “Would it be so great a crime?”

“ _Would it be your decision to make?_ ” Athena asked in return. Tracer looked from Widowmaker to the phone, not sure whose reaction she was more surprised by.

“You’re a philosopher too, now, love?” she asked Athena. “There anything you can’t do?”

“ _Make you bring back VTOLs in one piece?_ ”

“Oi, the Orca’s fine!”

“ _This time._ ”

Tracer shook her head, mouthed ‘ _cheeky_ ’ to Widowmaker, who was still staring dead ahead like her mind was elsewhere.

“I have taken enough lives,” Widowmaker murmured. “I would not dismiss the opportunity to save one.”

Back in Gibraltar, Zenyatta said: “It appears we are at an impasse. Perhaps a vote may be called for?”

“Save him,” Tracer and Widowmaker said almost in unison.

“Very well. Athena?”

“ _I… wish to remain impartial upon this issue,_ ” Athena said uncomfortably. “ _I am unused to dealing with moral quandaries._ ”

“As you wish. Genji?”

Across from Zenyatta, Genji hummed in thought.

“I apologise, master,” he said at last, “but on this issue I must concur with the others. Lena, bring back his memory core. We’ll see if we can’t get him back.”

“Will do!” came Tracer’s voice from the orb. “Ah… and Zen?”

“Yes, Lena?”

“No hard feelings?”

Zenyatta chuckled. “My philosophies have been insulted by professionals, Lena. You are barely an amateur. I shall abide by your decision.”

“Great! Umm… I think? Seeya soon!”

The line clicked dead.

“I hope I have not disappointed you, master,” Genji said quietly.

“Not at all, Genji,” Zenyatta replied, laying a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It is a poor student who blindly agrees with his master. And you are an excellent student,” he added with an amused tone.

“That said,” he added after a moment, “I am disappointed that you have not followed your own teachings.”

“What do you mean?”

“You once told me that in battle one must think two moves ahead, to anticipate the moves of the other before they have even conceived of them themselves. It saddens me that you did not do so here.”

Behind his faceplate Genji frowned in confusion. “I don’t…”

“I saw two troubled individuals hurrying into a decision that should never be rushed. In such circumstances, a devil’s advocate is sometimes necessary, regardless of personal opinions and beliefs. To ensure a debate has at least some balance to it.” He tilted his head in an omnic gesture of satisfaction. “Suffice to say I shall hardly be excommunicating you three for your decision.”

Genji was left in startled silence as Zenyatta quietly resumed his meditation.

 

* * *

 

Twelve hours later, Tracer and Widowmaker sat in exhausted silence in the cockpit of the Orca as it lifted off from the airfield outside Paris, swung around to face south-west, and roared off into the midday sky.

“Ship? Take it slow and steady. Low profile and all that,” Tracer said. “Don’t wanna get caught this close to getting away.”

“ _Acknowledged,_ ” said the Orca’s AI. “ _Flying quiet._ ”

On the control console between them, in the cup holder of all things, sat Jax’s memory core. A silver sphere slightly larger than a tennis ball, covered in glowing blue hieroglyphs and lines. Strange to think that all he was, was bundled up in there. Somewhere.

To Tracer’s right, Widowmaker stared out of the window at the hills and fields of central France.

“Talon always flew at night,” she said by way of explanation, gazing down at the green and gold patchwork. “I never saw… all this.”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Tracer said. “When I first joined the RAF, back when that judge I told you about said it was them or the slammer, I hated it. All those rules and the military discipline! But then one day they let me up in a plane, some tiny little two-seater design that’s been around for about a hundred years. And we flew around for a bit and by the time we landed I never wanted to touch the ground again. You end up feeling like you belong up here.”

Widowmaker nodded, struggling to tear her eyes away.

“Speaking of fitting in,” Tracer continued, “I know we’re going back to Overwatch. And I’m gonna stay there, of course I am. But you don’t have to.”

Widowmaker looked round at her.

“No matter what 76 or Angie or Winston or Zen says. Hell, no matter what _I_ say. You wanna stay? You can stay and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. You wanna go? Go, I dunno, guard UN medical missions in Africa, or start a farm, or anythin’ else – you go do it. You’re not Overwatch property like you were Talon’s.”

Tracer blushed and looked away. “I don’t know. I just felt like I had to say that.”

Across the gap between their seats, a cold hand gripped hers.

“Then I shall go where you go, _chérie_.”

Tracer looked down at their clasped hands, then up into intense yellow eyes.

“To the end of the line, huh, love?”

“ _Jusqu'au bout du monde_.” _To the end of the world.  
_

They stayed like that a long time, hand in hand and enjoying the view, as the Orca flew on into the cloud-flecked blue sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They all made it! They're going home!  
> And that means this fic probably is ending now. For real this time! (But not *just* yet)


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter, folks! Thanks for taking this journey with me!

_One week later  
_

“Now, I want you to focus on the end of my stylus here.”

Yellow eyes twitched microscopically. Diagrams and close-ups shone on the touchscreen tablet Angela held in her other hand.

“Done.”

That voice. God above, it brought back memories.

“Good. Now track it with your eyes as I move it, but keep your head stationary.”

She waved the stylus back and forth. Those yellow eyes, which used to be a beautiful shade of light brown, followed it in a fashion that brought the word ‘predatory’ to Angela’s mind.

Behind her Fareeha gave a snort of not-quite-laughter. “Her vision is fine, Angela, I promise you that.”

“So it may be,” she retorted, “but if doctors worked solely on our patient’s assurances we’d still be in the dark ages.”

She scrolled down her tablet’s display, reviewing her findings. “That said,” she continued, “you appear to be in perfect health. Discounting of course your… physical alterations.”

In front of her, Widowmaker gave her an impatient scowl.

“Will there be anything else, Dr Ziegler?” she asked, icily polite.

Angela stepped back from the bed Widowmaker was sat on, tapped a few times on her tablet, entered a last few data points. Once she was done she sat back down behind her desk.

“That… depends,” she said as evenly as possible.

The Angela Ziegler of years ago had dreamed of this day. Getting Amélie back from Talon’s clutches at last. She had entertained all sorts of saviour fantasies about reversing the mental conditioning, undoing the horrendous surgery, bringing the woman she’d loved back from the dead. On slow days she wondered idly how they’d celebrate being back together. It would start with a bottle of wine, she’d long ago decided. How it ended, in her mind’s eye, usually depended on how lonely she was feeling that particular day.

But she’d moved on. Reconnected with Fareeha, learned to her shock that the energetic young girl she’d been distant friends with in Overwatch had grown into a proud soldier who, to her private but intense annoyance, had a good ten centimetres on her now. Fareeha was everything Amélie Lacroix had not been: cool-headed, a steady presence, and above all a good influence.

So now she sat behind her desk, with her old lover staring her down in front of her and her new one stood to one side to make sure Widowmaker behaved herself – Soldier 76 still didn’t trust her, not completely – and suddenly nothing seemed as certain as she thought it would be.

“We can talk about curing you, if you want,” she said at last.

Widowmaker was not dumb. She knew what that meant. But still she said: “I thought I have a clean bill of health, doctor.”

Always doctor, or Dr Ziegler. Never once had she called her Angela. Amélie had only called her Dr Ziegler when she was impressed or wanted to show her off.

“You know what I mean.”

Widowmaker glared at her. “I am happy with the current state of things. Don’t they have a saying in English – if it is not broken, do not fix it?”

In the corner of her vision Angela saw Fareeha tense, ever so slightly. Preparing to intervene if tempers flared.

“It would appear to me, Dr Ziegler, that you wish to change me more for your own benefit than mine.”

Those words stung. The truth often does.

“That’s not true,” she said.

Widowmaker raised a solitary eyebrow and said nothing.

“Look,” Angela continued, wringing her hands, “I just think… it would be remiss of me, not to offer. That is all.”

“Then I decline your offer, doctor. I have no wish to die.”

That made Angela sit up. “Die?”

“If Lacroix returns, I go. To where? I cannot say. But I doubt it is a place I can return from.”

Angela bit her lip. “Is that how it works, then?” Truth be told, she hadn’t considered that possibility. She’d expected a few choice memories to have been wiped and the aggression centres in Amélie’s brain to be sent into overdrive. It was how she would have made a killer. Not that she ever would – but she had wondered, on dark days, how it could be done.

But this? A total personality change? A new identity? It made more sense, she realised. The complete destruction of Lacroix and the building of a new person in her place – it was very Talon, she realised, very their _style_.

And in a strange way she felt a little jolt of relief. The changes she’d expected, she could reverse. Just. But even Dr Ziegler the miracle worker would struggle to dredge Amélie’s remains out of Widowmaker’s mind. It was out of her hands. A fait accompli. The burden was no longer on her shoulders alone.

Widowmaker nodded. “There is no room for two in here,” she said, a hint of softness in her voice now, tapping her head.

For a moment Angela dropped the façade of an interested but detached healer.

“There’s nothing left of her? At all?”

“Nothing but her memories.”

Angela swallowed back a lump in her throat. “That’s… a shame,” she said, trying not to let her voice waver. “I would have liked to say goodbye.”

Fareeha looked at her in concern. Widowmaker broke eye contact. There was an awkward silence for a moment.

“As I said, nothing but her memories,” Widowmaker said quietly.

Angela looked glum.

“So I remember her last moments, before Talon changed her,” she continued. Yellow eyes held Angela’s gaze. “Gérard was in her thoughts… and you were too.”

Angela’s hand went to her mouth. She looked like she was about to cry. Fareeha sidled up to her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

Widowmaker looked away again.

“If there is anything left of her in me,” she said, trying to articulate sentiments she was not used to, “you do not need to say goodbye.”

Angela looked at her miserably for a few seconds, then forced a weak smile. “No. No, I suppose I do not.”

After a moment Widowmaker stood briskly, as if to draw a line under what they had said.

“Am I free to go?” she asked.

Angela nodded. “You’re more than fit to work with us, Am… uh… hold on. I need a name,” she said with a embarrassed chuckle. “For the medical records. I guess Amélie’s no longer correct?”

Widowmaker shook her head.

“So… Widowmaker, then?”

Truth be told, she didn’t much like the sound of that one either anymore. Too much history and Talon’s twisted humour coiled up in it.

“Leave it blank,” she said after a moment’s thought. “I’ll think about it.”

With a quick glance at Angela and Fareeha, she hurried out of the med-bay, the door hissing closed behind her.

“Well, that could have gone worse,” Fareeha said eventually, sitting down on Angela’s desk and shunting some paperwork to one side with her backside.

“I suppose,” Angela sighed. “I just… I don’t know. I had all these big, stupid ideas of rushing in and saving her from Talon’s conditioning, bringing her back, Angela Ziegler saves the day…” She trailed off, slumping back in her chair. “Stupid, like I say.”

Fareeha ruffled Angela’s hair affectionately and earned a good-natured glare for her troubles.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” she said.

“I know I shouldn’t,” Angela said, rearranging her hair only for Fareeha to mess it up again. She cursed, tried not to grin, batted her hand away. “But when a complete stranger looks out at you from the face of someone you used to love, it’s not a good feeling – stop that!” she cried, pushing Fareeha’s hand away yet again.

“Fareeha, how am I meant to feel sorry for my stupid self if you keep goofing around like this?” she demanded, not even trying to hide her guilty smile.

“I cannot say, Dr Ziegler,” Fareeha said with an infuriating little smirk, and leaned down to plant a delicate kiss on Angela’s forehead. Angela blushed.

“But what I _can_ say is that woman deserves a second chance,” she continued, suddenly serious. “There’s good in her somewhere,” she said with another snort of half-laughter, “no matter how hard she tries to hide it.”

 

* * *

 

Widowmaker had not taken ten steps from the med-bay door when she became aware of being watched. Some sixth sense that all snipers end up developing warned her – _someone’s got their eyes on you_.

She looked over her shoulder.

Ah. Correction. Someone’s got their eye on you.

“I was wondering when we’d meet,” Ana Amari said softly, standing up straight from the wall she’d been leaning against.

Widowmaker stiffened, turned to properly face the other woman, said nothing.

“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

No visible weapons on her but Widowmaker knew that meant very little with people like Ana.

“Not at all,” she said coolly.

“Just not very talkative?” Ana asked.

Widowmaker shrugged.

Ana walked towards her, stopped and folded her arms.

“I hear you’re going to be working for us now,” she said. “And that we’ve got Lena to thank for showing you the light.” She smiled. “I tell everyone I meet that girl’s got a good soul. Perhaps it’s infectious.”

Widowmaker still said nothing, tense, waiting for the years of pent-up revenge that she expected. And, perhaps, deserved.

But Ana’s smile did not falter. “I hope the others are treating you well?”

“Well enough,” Widowmaker shrugged. “Actually, the most hostility I have encountered is from your daughter.”

Ana raised her eyebrow in surprise.

“She tried to throttle me when we first met on that train,” Widowmaker explained.

Ana grimaced. “Ah, yes. I remember her recounting that to me. I must apologise; Fareeha has always had a temper to her, no matter how hard she tries to hide it.”

Widowmaker shrugged again.

“But she did tell me something extraordinary as well, about the last time we met. According to her, your shot was a deliberate attempt to spare my life in spite of your…” she paused, hunting for the word.

“Conditioning.”

“Conditioning, yes. Is that true?”

Widowmaker could tell Ana suspected it was not.

“In a manner of speaking,” she admitted, with a hint of defiance.

“Oh?”

“As I have explained to Lena, my conditioning did indeed fail that day. But not in the way I explained to your daughter. That was a… _pieux mensonge_. A white lie, do the English say? So she would stop throttling me.”

“So what really happened?” Ana asked, a mixture of curiosity and something else, some emotion Widowmaker could not place, etched on her worn face.

Widowmaker gave a self-deprecating smile. “You made me feel anger. You got the first shot. You were better than I was. It was the first time in my life I was angry, and I missed. I had actually aimed for your forehead.”

Ana mulled that over for a moment. “Truly?” she asked at last.

Widowmaker nodded.

“Perhaps I should count my blessings, then,” Ana smiled. There was a brief pause. “That’s all I really wanted to ask you. I guess you’ve probably got somewhere else you need to be.”

“Not really. Soldier 76 wants to see how I perform in the training range later this afternoon. Other than that, everyone appears to be staying out of my way.”

“He is putting you through your paces, then? Perhaps I’ll come and watch. See whether the younger generation’s got anything going for it,” Ana smirked.

“By all means do,” Widowmaker said. “I shall try not to miss.”

It had been meant as an attempt as humour and took her a moment to realise how it might have sounded. Ana, however, looked amused.

“I see Talon left you with a sense of humour,” she said. “You’ve got one up on Lacroix already.”

She turned around, made to leave, but Widowmaker blurted out: “Is that it?”

“Is what what?” Ana asked in confusion.

“You are not… angry at me?” Widowmaker asked uncertainly. “I was expecting a colder reception from the woman whose eye I took.”

“Oh, you took a lot more than my eye, dear,” Ana said lightly. “It might even be accurate to say you did take my life, in a way.”

Widowmaker looked repentant.

“But what use is holding a grudge? The omnics were enslaved, and we forgave them, did we not? Despite all they did. Same rule applies here.” There was a faraway look in her eye now. “No, let the past stay where it belongs. God knows everyone in this damn Watchpoint has enough of the stuff. I’m ready to turn to the future now.”

And with that, she walked off, offering Widowmaker a wave goodbye over her shoulder.

Widowmaker was left alone in the corridor, suddenly feeling like she’d been handed something enormous to measure up to, quite without realising it.

 

* * *

 

A few hours later she opened the door to her quarters, let it close behind her, and flopped down on the bed.

She had thought the drill instructor Talon had seconded her to, during her first few months, had been a cruel and unforgiving man. As it turned out, this Soldier 76 could chew that man up and spit him out in tiny chunks.

He’d started her out on a target range, then moved on to a mocked-up building when she’d blown holes in all the training dummies. She stormed the building. She defended the building. She rescued hostages – or rather, she rescued one set of bots from another. He made her abseil down from the ceiling, crawl in through the basement, crash in through the windows. She’d excelled at all of it. So then he’d gone over to a weapons locker, retrieved what looked like a pulse gun on steroids, and told her this was now a live-fire exercise. Without letting her replace her blank rounds first.

If she had a guardian angel, it had worked overtime for that next half hour. 76 used every trick in the book to try and kill her, to the point where she was beginning to worry if the man was trying to work out some personal issues. Eventually she found herself sprawled in the dust, a boot in her stomach and the muzzle of a gun in her face – but with hers in his too.

“Good enough,” he’d growled, removed his boot and stuck out a hand instead. “Welcome to Overwatch,” he added as he helped her up.

All she had managed in response was a faint groan.

Ziegler had patched up her cuts and scrapes afterwards and, with a startled little laugh, reached up and plucked something that stung out of Widowmaker’s neck. A tiny biotic needle. Clearly 76 hadn’t been the only one putting her through her paces. She’d never even _seen_ Ana.

“That woman is going to hell,” she had hissed as Angela stifled her giggles.

Now, she looked around her empty, unfurnished room. Plain white walls and a single bulb in the ceiling.

Reinhardt had suggested to her one afternoon that she got a pet to keep her company. From the way he asked, she rather got the feeling that he just wanted an excuse for there to be a fluffy animal at Watchpoint: Gibraltar. She wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’d requested permission to get one himself and been denied. Either way, she felt he might be disappointed by her first instinct of a redknee tarantula.

Truth be told, she didn’t really want to spend her time in this whitewashed room. It reminded her a little too much of her quarters at Talon, except for the fact that Talon’s facilities didn’t have peeling paint or mattresses with the springs sticking out of them.

Half a minute later she was knocking on the door next to hers.

“Come in!” came the call from inside.

“ _Mon Dieu_ ,” she muttered under her breath as she closed the door behind her.

Tracer’s room couldn’t have been more different from hers. There were so many posters on the walls – for movies, concerts, old Overwatch propaganda posters of the old heroes – she could barely see the walls. The floor was a mess of clothes that been thrown here and there, as if they were trying to make it out of her wardrobe under their own steam.

A holographic projection on the far wall was showing a sports match. Football, by the look of it. A commentator was getting very excited by whatever was happening on the pitch and the crowd was roaring. All Widowmaker saw were a few men in colourful outfits punting a ball back and forth.

Tracer was sat in a swivel chair, feet up on her desk, a beer in her hand and her eyes glued to the match. “Give me a minute,” she called over her shoulder. “They’re in extra time anyway.” She glanced round. “Oh, hi, love! There’s beer in the fridge if you want one.” She pointed to a mini-fridge buried under a heap of old socks.

 _Well, why not?_ she thought.

For the next five minutes she sipped a cold beer while Tracer acted like the fate of the world would be decided by what happened out there on the pitch. She didn’t think she’d ever seen the other woman this excited.

On the screen a man in red was getting very close to one end of the pitch. Judging by the amount of men in blue trying to stop him, this was either a very good or a very bad thing, Widowmaker decided.

“Come on… come on… come on you daft prick, kick it!” Tracer bellowed at the screen.

“I don’t think he can hear you, _chérie_ ,” Widowmaker said, but Tracer didn’t seem to notice.

“Yes… yes, come on… oh, no… no no no NO!” A blue-clad man had taken the ball. Clearly this was bad news. Then someone in red got the ball back. Widowmaker started idly reading the label on her beer.

Tracer made an odd noise halfway between a drawn-out cheer and a scream. “Come on… yes, mate…” The man in red scored. The noise from the holoscreen was deafening. “ _Goal!_ ” Tracer roared, punching the air and whooping. “Get in!” She tried to make a celebratory swivel on her chair, messed it up, and nearly toppled backwards onto the floor. Widowmaker darted forward to catch her.

Members of the crowd were beginning to storm the pitch on the screen. Widowmaker hauled Tracer to her feet and made a gesture to mute the hologram.

“Good news?” she deadpanned.

“Arsenal just won the Premier League!” Tracer crowed.

Once again Widowmaker wondered whether she would ever really understand English.

“My team won,” Tracer explained, noticing the blank stare she was getting.

“Ah. Well… congratulations?”

“Cheers, love! This calls for a celebration!” She downed the rest of her drink and immediately pulled out another one. “How you doing, anyway?” she asked, as they both sat down on her bed next to one another, Tracer quickly trying to shove some dirty pyjamas out of sight.

“Not too bad. Soldier 76 just tried to kill me.”

Tracer choked on her beer. “ _What_?”

“A live-fire training exercise, he called it. I call it attempted murder,” Widowmaker grumbled.

“Oh, _that_!” Tracer cried. “Yeah, he made me do it too. I ended up blinking him through a plywood wall.” She giggled at the memory.

“Well, now I feel like an under-achiever.”

Tracer shook her head. “Nah, he probably just went easy on me.”

Widowmaker tilted her head as if to say _perhaps_.

“Either way, it is now apparently official,” she said.

“What is?”

“I am a member of Overwatch. Again, one might argue.”

Tracer beamed so bright that Widowmaker nearly had to squint. “Aw, love! That’s great news! You’re throwin’ your lot in with us, then?”

“Well I do not know how to farm and the UN won’t employ people with a criminal record. So Overwatch it must be,” Widowmaker smirked.

“Oh, man, today’s a good day,” Tracer smiled. “Gunners win the cup _and_ we get you on board!” She jumped to her feet and started rummaging around under her bed.

“I asked Winston to make this in case you decided to do a runner after all,” she said, her voice muffled. “But I think it’ll make a good welcoming gift too…” She re-emerged, holding a small box in one hand.

For one heart-stopping moment Widowmaker thought Tracer was about to ask her to marry her. Considering what had happened to her last partner, she was not completely on board with the idea.

But instead Tracer flipped the box open and produced a small necklace, a triangle of white metal with a small blue gem that glowed at its centre.

Widowmaker took it in her hands and was suddenly struck by how much it resembled the chronal accelerator humming on Tracer’s chest.

“It was supposed to be in memory of the machine that gave you so much bloody grief over the last few weeks,” Tracer said bashfully, tapping the housing of her accelerator. “But now it can be a reminder of your favourite Overwatch member!” she trilled with the cockiest grin Widowmaker thought she’d ever seen.

“Careful with that ego, _chérie_. I’m good at popping people’s big heads.”

“Bah, you love me really.”

There was, Widowmaker thought, little point denying that. She bowed her head slightly so Tracer could slip the necklace on her.

“Suits you,” Tracer said, leaning back but keeping her hands on Widowmaker’s shoulders.

They paused like that for a second, a thousand things hanging unsaid in the air between them.

Then Tracer closed the distance between them, and planted a kiss with surprising grace on Widowmaker’s lips.

“Welcome to Overwatch, love,” she murmured, pulling back and smiling a delicate smile. And then it was Widowmaker’s turn to close the distance, and there was nothing more to say.

 

* * *

 

A few levels down, on the other side of the base, a pot simmers on an electric stove. The Watchpoint’s kitchen sees only the barest of use these days. No longer do meals have to be prepared for a whole complement of soldiers – just the few heroes who are left.

The door hisses open, metal feet clank warily inside. The one stirring the pot looks up in surprise.

“Oh! Hello, friend. I wasn’t really expecting anyone else to be down here.”

An inquisitive bleep.

“My name is Jax. And yours?”

Some bleeps, a chirrup.

“I see. Forgive me for saying so, but I have not seen a Bastion unit for some time. You are looking well for your age.”

Click, whirr.

“Not at all.”

A quiet whine, pitch-shifting up.

“This? Garbure. A stew of ham and vegetables. I’m making it for the rest of the crew… well, for when they get back. I understand they’re out on another mission.”

Bleep, click, an electronic hum.

“Ah. Yes. No, I’m not a training droid. Or at least, I wasn’t originally. I’ve been uploaded into this chassis as a temporary measure.” The hand stirring the pot is raised in demonstration. “They were able to find this and graft it onto me in place of one of the guns. Makes me a bit more versatile. Ha! We are rather alike in that regard, no?”

A happy series of burbles, then a bleep.

“How I ended up in this chassis is a rather long story, my friend.”

An excited buzz.

“Alright then, if you insist. I suppose the garbure could stand to simmer for a bit anyway. Hmm. Where to begin?”

A blue optical module watches expectantly.

“Very well. Here goes.”

A reassuring chirrup.

“It was, Widowmaker thought, a little bit like history was repeating itself…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I want to say an enormous thank you to everyone who left a kudos, everyone who commented, and an especially enormous thank you to the regular readers (you guys know who you are). Your kind words are quite literally the reason why this original two-shot is now the biggest fic I've ever written. And also the reason Jax and Widowmaker didn't end up biting the dust!  
> So once again, thanks for reading, hope you liked it, and if I ever write for the Overwatch fandom again I hope you'll drop by and check it out. Thanks again!


	16. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO: After almost two months I have an idea or two for a sequel and might start writing it soon. So to pave the way for that, here's a little epilogue. I've also done some rewriting to chapters 6 and 13 - nothing major, just a few tiny changes to Morrison and Reyes' characters to bring them into line with my new headcanons.

The room could have been anywhere. A tastefully furnished penthouse in any capital city in the world, glass and steel, holographic displays and modern art on the walls. Talon maintained rooms just like it all over the world. Somewhere for high-ranked agents to rest their heads between deployments. 

The man in it, though, he could only have been one person. Most Talon operatives pride themselves on their ability to blend in, but not Reaper. Quite the opposite. 

He drank thousand-dollar whiskey straight from the bottle and watched the holo-screen in front of him with practised disdain. On the screen: ten silhouettes that spoke with voices masked by computerised distortion to protect the speakers’ identities. 

“So she’s out of our reach then?” one of them asked. 

“No-one’s untouchable,” another countered. 

“You can’t touch someone you can’t find.” 

“Bah. She’ll stick her head out eventually, and when she does, we’ll lop it off.” 

“With what? Have you already forgotten what happened the last two times we tried?” 

“Despite the recent failings of our _top agent_ –” not even the disguise on the voice could mask the disdain, Reaper rolled his eyes “- I remain confident that with the correct application of force…” 

“Forget it.” A new voice, one everyone in this conference call half-recognised. One worth listening to. “As of right now, I think we shall close the book on Project Widowmaker.” 

Murmurs of assent, some half-hearted. Reaper took another swig. 

_Morrison liked whiskey. Reyes was a bourbon man.  
_

The thought bubbled up in his head like foetid gas in a swamp. His face twitched. Smoke billowed from his nostrils and mouth. 

On another screen, to the left of the main one, was everything Talon had on the chronal accelerator. He had read and re-read it before the call began. No answers in it. 

“With the loss of one of our top agents a certain… reconfiguring, will be necessary.” 

“Agreed. Our ability to project force-” 

“Has barely changed,” Reaper ( _Reyes_ ) snapped. “One woman doesn’t make up for an army. You have me and my men.” 

“And as you proved on both sides of the Channel, she was better than both.” 

A hairline crack appeared in the whiskey bottle under Reaper’s clenching fingers. 

“She got lucky and had outside help.” 

“Is that an excuse?” 

“Feel free to fire me if you don’t like my performance,” he snapped. “See how much _reconfiguring_ you need to do after that.” 

“That will not be necessary. Calm yourselves, the pair of you.” 

The other one apologised. Reaper just made a dismissive noise. 

“On to other things, then. Next item on the agenda?” 

“Vishkar. And I can inform the board that my contacts there say things are progressing nicely. Working prototypes within two weeks.” 

“Excellent. And while we’re on the subject – Rio?” 

“Primed for our intervention. And Vishkar’s looking forward to picking up the pieces.” 

The meeting moved on. Reaper tuned out. They were done talking to him anyway. 

He sat there in the anonymous apartment as the sun sank behind tinted glass, drinking down to the bottom of the bottle and remembering things from a lifetime ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I now have a 9 to5 I can't promise quick or frequent chapters for the new fic when it comes out, but hopefully it'll hold up to this one!  
> EDIT: A sequel is now up! Go check out [The Dogs of War](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8634646/chapters/19801786)


End file.
